From left: Panang, green, yellow and red curry pastes. MUST CREDIT: Peggy Cormary for The Washington Post/Food styling by Nicola Justine Davis for The Washington PostMy refrigerator is a graveyard of half-used jars. Jams, condiments, spreads, pickles – you get the idea. Even so, there’s at least one personal favorite staple I like to keep around all the time: jarred curry paste.
I’m such a fan of this flavor-packed convenience item, most often associated with Thai food, that I almost always have one jar in the fridge and another in the pantry waiting in the wings. Sometimes I’ll have two open at once, one green and one red.
“From a weeknight cooking perspective, adding a paste to your cooking will deliver a punch of flavor, saving you time and providing an excellent starting point for tweaking or amplifying the flavors,” cookbook author Hetty Lui McKinnon wrote in an installment of our Plant Powered II newsletter, particularly singing the praises of curry paste and tomato paste.
Curry paste is widely available at grocery stores; the Thai Kitchen brand has become pretty ubiquitous, but you may find a few other options on shelves, including Mae Ploy and Maesri. You’ll come across a wider selection at Asian markets. (Yes, curry pastes, even if supplemented with more herbs and spices, are common in Asian cuisines, including those not made from scratch.) Flavors and heat levels can vary significantly between red, green and other curry pastes, but functionally, they’re interchangeable. So feel free to swap in a different option than what your recipe calls for if you don’t mind changing up the flavor profile.
I’ll turn the floor over to McKinnon to share a bit more about curry paste:
“Made with pulverized aromatics, herbs and spices, Thai curry paste carries big flavors that can be utilized in dishes other than curries. I use it as a flavor base for a Thai-style baked risotto, and also like to add it to butternut squash soup to quickly bring in more complex flavors. There are several types of Thai curry pastes available, all with different combinations of herbs and spices. … As with all store-bought products, they will vary in flavor, saltiness and intensity, so try out different brands and consider this when seasoning your final dish.”
Stir-Fried Curry Rice Cakes. MUST CREDIT: Peggy Cormary for The Washington Post/Food styling by Nicola Justine Davis for The Washington PostIf you are vegan or vegetarian, read the labels of whatever you’re buying, as some brands contain seafood-based ingredients, such as shrimp paste or fish sauce. Chile peppers, garlic, ginger/galangal, makrut lime, lemongrass, salt and spices are other typical ingredients. If you’re on a low-sodium diet, it’s worth comparing labels and being judicious in how much you use as well.
Also worth noting: Many of the jars or cans at the store are on the small side (about 4 ounces), meaning they don’t take up much room and, in many circumstances, you can use it up with just one or two, or maybe three, recipes. And that’s where I come in. Here are some tips and recipes for putting that curry paste to good use.
Curries
As McKinnon said, curry paste is a wonderful shortcut for improvised weeknight cooking, which is why I grabbed a jar for my quick and tasty, if not authentic, Thai-Style Chicken Curry with rotisserie chicken (or tofu) and frozen vegetables. Briefly sauteing the curry paste in fat before adding the coconut milk makes a wonderful foundation for the dish. Just cook the paste until fragrant, minding any potential splatters. At most this takes a minute or two, as in Leela Punyaratabandhu’s more traditional Kaeng Khiao Wan Nuea (Green Curry With Beef and Thai Eggplant). With the basic template of curry paste + coconut milk + protein (raw or already cooked, adjusting the time as needed) + veggies (ditto), you can pull together a satisfying dish without a lot of effort. Just serve with rice to soak up all the flavorful liquid.
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Soups
Panang Curry Pumpkin Noodle Soup. MUST CREDIT: Rey Lopez for The Washington Post/Food styling by Carolyn Robb for The Washington Post
Panang Curry Pumpkin Noodle Soup. MUST CREDIT: Rey Lopez for The Washington Post/Food styling by Carolyn Robb for The Washington PostNo surprise here given the overlap with curries, but curry paste is clutch for speedy soups, too. “I love how just a spoonful of this base of flavor can transform a pot of simple ingredients into something spectacular,” Daniela Galarza wrote in her Eat Voraciously newsletter. Daniela put that transformative power to work in her Panang Curry Pumpkin Noodle Soup, supplementing the paste with several shallots, garlic and ginger, and filling out the broth with canned pumpkin (or butternut squash) and long noodles. Again, this is a fairly customizable approach that follows a similar track as a curry would, swapping in broth, and more of it, for the coconut milk. Ellie Krieger’s 30-minute Silken Tofu and Spring Vegetables in Thai Curry Broth floats planks of tofu and piles of crisp raw vegetables on top of the vibrant red liquid.
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Stir-fries
Thai-Style Chicken Curry. MUST CREDIT: Scott Suchman for The Washington Post/Food styling by Nicola Justine Davis for The Washington Post
Thai-Style Chicken Curry. MUST CREDIT: Scott Suchman for The Washington Post/Food styling by Nicola Justine Davis for The Washington PostA dish doesn’t necessarily have to be saucy to benefit from a jolt of curry paste. Case in point: Stir-fries. Instead of having to prep a bunch of other aromatics or build a sauce from scratch, scoop a dollop of curry paste into your wok or skillet, toasting it briefly in the oil, much as you would for a curry or soup. McKinnon’s Stir-Fried Curry Rice Cakes use a generous 4 ounces of paste, but you can experiment with different amounts depending on what brand you’re using or what you’re pairing it with. She employs a bit less (2½ tablespoons) in her Thai Curry Snow Pea Stir-Fry, a clever 15-minute recipe that gives more weight to the delicate flavor of the vegetables.
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Sheet-pan meals
Thai-Seasoned Roasted Shrimp With Green Beans, Chile, Peanuts and Herbs. MUST CREDIT: Stacy Zarin Goldberg for The Washington Post/Food styling by Nichole Bryant for The Washington PostCurry paste’s all-in-one flavor package makes it a good option any time you’re thinking of roasting proteins or vegetables, too. Because it’s fairly thick and potent, try cutting it with oil, citrus juice or liquid sweetener to balance the flavors and make it easier to spread or drizzle. In Thai-Seasoned Roasted Shrimp With Green Beans, Chile, Peanuts and Herbs, the seafood and vegetables get coated in a blend of oil, lime juice, fish sauce, honey, ginger, curry paste and garlic. You can follow that lead for your own preferred ingredients for a quick sheet-pan meal. Or embolden roast chicken by applying a similar combination under and over the skin. Green Curry Cauliflower Roast takes its cues from curry by creating a coconut-based sauce that’s poured over an entire head of the cruciferous veg. The sauce pulls double duty. First it helps the cauliflower steam and cook through when covered in foil. Then it flavors and burnishes the exterior once the head is uncovered and basted every 10 minutes for 30 minutes. 4 ways to use that forgotten jar of curry paste in your fridge
