Authentic Thai green curry paste can be easily made at home if you have the right ingredients. This curry paste is the base for the popular Thai green chicken curry and fish curry. Once you learn how to make this paste, cooking Thai curries will be a breeze.
6stalkscoriander-roots, stem and leaves(about 1/4 cup loosely packed)
1/4cupThai basil leavestightly packed
5lime leaves
4 to 6Bird's eye chilies(Thai chillies)
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Instructions
Soak dried prawns in hot water for 10 minutes.
Roast the whole spices
Dry roast coriander seeds and peppercorns on medium flame for about 2 to 3 minutes. Add cumin seeds and roast for 1 minute. Let the spices cool down.
Prepare lemongrass and galangal
Peel the outer tough layers of lemongrass until you see the soft yellow-green stem inside. Chop off the bulb (about an inch from the bottom) and two-thirds of the top part. You'll be left with the bottom third of the stalk. This is the part we will be using for the curry paste.
You can either chop the lemongrass finely or grate. You can also pound with mortar and pestle.
Scrape off the skin from galangal and chop into small pieces or mince.
Blend
Roughly chop shallots, garlic and chillies. Drain the soaked prawns.
Place all the ingredients in a blender jar and blend into a paste. You might want to scrape the sides and blend a few times until you get a smooth paste.
Video
Notes
It is important that you finely chop or mince the lemongrass and galangal before blending. Their fibrous nature makes it hard to blend smoothly if the pieces are not small enough.
If your blender is not powerful enough, you can blend the tough ingredients first before adding the basil, coriander and lime leaves.
This recipe makes 1/2 a cup of curry paste to make Thai green curry that can serve 6 to 7 people.