Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen today I want to show you how I make my vegan red curry I know
many of you who follow the show are vegans but I'd like to suggest that instead of just taking
my any of my curry recipes and just switching out ingredients there are lots of little tricks
and tips you can follow that will really maximize the flavor of your curry in fact I fed this recipe
to my very decidedly non vegetarian friend and they loved it did not miss the meat in it at
all and in Thai by the way this dish would be called gaeng ped mangsawirat gaeng ped is
red curry and mangsawirat means vegetarian in a general sense there's no word in Thai that
means vegan in the specific sense that the word vegan means in English so we'll stick with monks
I realize alright let's get started so personally I think the most important decision you can make
in making a vegan curry is what kind of Nuggets are you going to put in it because that really
affects the character of the curry so I'm going to show you what I like shiitake and mushrooms and
specifically dry not fresh because dried shitake mushrooms they have this really intense earthiness
and a chewiness that the fresh ones just don't have so specifically that's what I'm looking for
and so what you do is you soak it in hot water and they'll bloom and swell and become this nice chewy
meaty you know like texturally meaty mushrooms and so what I want to do at this point is I want to
squeeze out all of this water and while keeping the water by the way I want to cut it by first
removing the stem which I find pretty tough and just do slices not too thin again you want this to
be substantial a little bit chewy there we go now the other vegetable that I like to use is bamboo
shoots and you can get it in cans at any Asian grocery stores right out of the can they've got
a smell that can be off-putting for some people so what you want to do is really wash it well and
then I boil it in some water for about 5 minutes just on a simmer and then drain it and wash it
one more time and that will get rid of a lot of that sort of bamboo smell I don't know how else
to describe it some people don't mind it in that case just give it a quick rinse but I think it's
always safe to do that first and then finally the last thing I'm gonna put in my curry is tofu but a
very specific kind of tofu so I like medium firm smooth tofu if possible the firm one I find the
textures a little too almost little to chalky a little too dense but soft is too soft and it just
falls apart in your curry so medium I think it's just the perfect balance absorbs flavor well melts
in your mouth adds creaminess it's just beautiful so I've got some coconut milk here in this pot and
by the way if you haven't seen my 101 video about coconut milk I highly recommend it I talked about
how to choose the best coconut milk for cooking which I am using in this recipe so I'm gonna
let this reduce as per usual reduce until it's thick and in the oil the coconut oil will stay
actually start to separate out from the coconut milk so this is exactly where you want it to be
you see how the in the edges you can see that the coconut oil clear coconut oil is separating
from the coconut milk and then I'm gonna add my curry paste and so the curry paste that I'm using
is just store-bought for today but when you are buying Thai curry paste at the store make sure you
read the ingredients because some brands will have shrimp paste added to it and so you know that's
not vegetarian you can also make your own I have a recipe for how to make it just make sure you omit
the shrimp paste and you can either just leave it out altogether or add some miso paste instead if
you happen to have it I wouldn't let go and buy a thing of miso just for that now as you can see the
coconut oil is basically frying the paste which is what we want now here's my secret ingredient
tomato paste that's right now before you freak out on panic why did she daring tomatoes is something
that we put in red curry in Thailand anyway and so the flavors work now the special thing about
tomatoes is one of the few plant foods it's really high in glutamate which is that umami factor and
when you start taking animal products out of a dish you also lose a lot of glutamate as well so
by adding this tomato paste we just basically like umami concentrate you really add that factor back
into the curry okay so that's my little secret right there and I'm not adding a lot so you're
not gonna taste this like a tomato wee curry I'm just adding enough for it to be hmm I wonder what
that is but it's so good the oil is separating from the pace I'm going to add now the rest of
my coconut milk and I'm also going to add about one cup of the mushroom water that we had from
earlier I don't want to add too much and have the the flavor of the mushroom be overpowering
but this also has a lot of umami flavor in there now I'm gonna give this some time for the curry
paste to dissolve into the liquid so the broth is boiling now let's season this thing so instead
of fish sauce I'm gonna go in with soy sauce I like to add just a dash of golden Mountain sauce
it's another type of soy sauce but the flavor is different and I find the flavor a little sharper
a little more oh it's hard to explain the more intense and I think just a little bit of it in
this curry really really works okay so just a couple of dashes look sweetness we're gonna need
some palm sugar just to balance out all of that saltiness some kaffir lime leaves okay these ones
right here I'm just going to roughly tear just to bruise them get all the flavor out that really
brightens up gives more life to the curry and now all our nuggets are going in so the mushrooms and
the bamboo shoots and at this point I'm gonna add the tofu but notice I add the tofu last once
you add the tofu I try not to like stir it too much otherwise the tofu starts breaking because
even though this is medium firm it's not firm and spread them out so you don't have to stir in order
to spread them out later so now I'm just gonna ever so gently push things around so the mushroom
other mushrooms the tofu becomes submerged and it's looking just a little thicker and we're gonna
add a little more of that mushroom broth just to thin things out even though this is technically
cooked enough already to eat you want to give it time to simmer so that the tofu has time to absorb
the flavor and so do the bamboo shoots so the you know you want to give a chance for ingredients to
get to know each other before you eat them okay mmm it smells so good in here now you have no idea
and it's been about 10 minutes I find that that's the minimum but that's enough 10 minutes is enough
for the tofu to start to get flavorful now for some color I'm adding these interesting-looking
peppers I'll show you the pepper in a second and they just need like another minute or so and here
here's what the guy looks like so at the store this was labeled long red pepper and I don't
know if that's just my Asian grocery store being typical or it's actually called long red pepper
if you guys know let me know in the comments so I'm gonna just turn this off now I've got some
Thai basil here this is so important this is going to add a floral aroma that is absolutely
crucial in the deliciousness of this curry hmm and the residual heat will wilt the basil that
yeah over some hot jasmine rice one thing to be careful about tofu is when tofu is hot it
is really hot and it stays hot for a really long time so gotta open it up and air it out
a little bit I am telling you there's something so satisfying between the creaminess of the tofu that
essentially melts as soon as you start chewing it and the chewiness of the mushrooms like together
so good and that sauce ah it's so flavorful and it's all in the little decisions that you make
right little you know the little bit of tomato paste and the choice of doing both soy sauce and
golden mountain sauce and the choice of dried mushrooms over fresh mushrooms makes such a big
difference so I really hope you give this a try whether or not you're vegetarian I think this is
such a delicious dish in and of itself the recipe has always to be on husky kitchen comm when you
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