Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen so today i have another recipe for a classic thai curry to
share with you but first a little backstory of why i decided to make this recipe so in the beginning
of the lockdown when people were starting to panic buy groceries i was very determined to not be one
of those people i thought you know what it's fine i just get what i need i show up at the store
and the shelves are looking kind of empty then i started to panic and so i went and started buying
all these dried and canned goods that i would never normally buy and there i was with canned
pineapples which i don't even like i never buy canned pineapple because i don't like i'd rather
cut up a fresh pineapple but here we are with canned pineapple so i've been staring at it
for a long time then i realized oh i can make a pineapple curry it's the perfect place to
use pineapple canned pineapple because the curry flavor itself is so strong that you don't really
need you know the most delicious of pineapple to make a good one still haven't told you the
name of the dish we are making what's called gaeng kua sapparod gaeng kua is a type of red curry
sapparod is pineapple and today we're going to make ours with gung or shrimp let's get
started so of course you can make this using fresh pineapple if you want but if you're using canned
you want to get pineapple chunks because you want nice big pieces and you want to get one that's
packed in pineapple juice not syrup super easy what we're going to do with the pineapple first
yes we're going gonna do something to the pineapple we're gonna first drain
the juice and we're not gonna use this ju like the juice in the can but what i like to do is
i mix this with some sparkling water and then make like a nice pineapple soda with it so you
just keep that for drinks or whatever now these pineapples are completely saturated in liquid
right now so they're not going to absorb curry flavor very well so what we're going to do is
we're going to squeeze the juice out of them take pineapples in your hand and you squeeze
and you would do this even with the fresh pineapple you want to get them
kind of flabby and they turn into sort of a fibrous thing almost like a pineapple brush
and then what happens here is once you put this into the curry it has room to soak up the curry
sauce otherwise you just get kind of like this piece of pineapple that hasn't really mingled
with the curry sauce okay so see how much juice now the pineapple is sitting in that's exactly
what we want we're still going to add all this juice into the curry but now you've made room for
the curry to tuck itself into the next thing we're going to do is deal with our dry shrimp now this
is completely my own trick in thailand this dish is typically made with dried mussels can't find
dried mussels here so in order to get that dried seafood flavor i thought i would add some dried
shrimp into the curry but i don't necessarily want like chunks of dried shrimp because i just want to
extract the flavor so i'm going to blitz them in a coffee grinder until they're really really fine
shrimp fluff i love it you might smell this and go oh that's really strong but once it mixes
in with everything it'll be really subtle okay that's all the prep everything else
is really straightforward let's get cooking so this is a good opportunity for me to do
like a thai curry 101 with you so i'm going to start by reducing some of my coconut milk
and that's going to be reduced down into just a fatty bit and we'll use that to saute a curry
paste so while i'm waiting for that to come to a boil let's talk curry paste a little bit
so i'm using red curry paste for this and in thailand there are actually a few varieties of
red curry paste there's some that's called genkua which is what we're making right now
and there's some that's called gangpet which is sort of your classic red curry it's ambiguous
how these are different at all a lot of people just use the two interchangeably you just use
the gangpet curry for to make genko so just use red curry face what i'm trying to say
is just use red curry paste you can make it i have a recipe i'll include in the written post
or you can use store bought which is what i do now because i have a baby and i just don't have any
time to make my own curry paste anymore okay so my coconut water coconut water coconut milk has come
to a boil i am going to just add my curry paste in right now now in my in some of my previous videos
you might have seen me reduce the coconut milk first get it oily first and then add the curry
paste you can do it either way you'll end up with the same thing at the end of the day i just find
that if the curry paste is quite dry and clumpy adding it while there's still a little bit of
liquid in the pot just allows you to break it up more easily and then you might start to see the
coconut oil starting to break apart from the paste that's exactly what you're looking for the curry
paste is now sort of frying in that oil however this may not happen for you because some coconut
milk has been sort of homogenized and they've got you know binders and things added to them
to prevent exactly this from happening so especially using the canned coconut milk so if
this doesn't happen and your paste is super thick just just move on with it it's fine okay so now
that it's had some time to sizzle in that coconut oil i am going to add the rest of my coconut milk
now i'm going to thin this out a little bit by adding some water you can also do unsalted
chicken stock if you have some sitting in the fridge yes and you see that bright red color
floating on top that's the coconut oil that split out this needs to simmer for about five minutes
to allow the curry paste all the herbs and the spices and the curry paste to really mingle with
the coconut milk so you get a more cohesive flavor in the sauce but meanwhile we also want to add
my dried shrimp fluff and i'm also going to throw in some kaffir lime leaves or what we call macro
and that is going to add some citrusy freshness to the curry it will just kind of brighten everything
up you want to be kind of bruised and tear in one motion so that the essential oils come out
before i let this simmer i'm also going to add some the pineapple in there so that the
pineapple has time to simmer and absorb all that all that flavor so they're all the juice and all
the chunks see i am usually not a pineapple on pizza kind of person but pineapple in curry
that's a different story okay we'll give that five minutes to allow all the flavors to mix and mingle
look at that there is something about watching curry simmer that is so so satisfying i just
love it okay so now we're gonna season this curry i've given you a range of how much fish
sauce to use you have to add it to taste because the saltiness gonna depend on your curry paste
so i'm adding just some chopped up palm sugar but you can totally do white sugar or brown
sugar it's such a small amount it's not going to make a difference and some tamarind so this curry
is a slightly sweet and sour kind of curry so you want the tartness to be prominent and i find that
it's not quite enough just from canned pineapple alone if you're using fresh pineapple that's quite
tart maybe it's enough so i'm going to add a little bit of tamarind and if you want to know
what this tamarind is how you use it how you make it i will link to a video where i talk through how
you make your own tamarind paste cooking tamarind i'm going to call it from now on how you make your
own cooking tamarind for thai cooking i'll link to that below and also if you're wondering about what
brand of curry paste to use how do you choose a good one so on and so forth i also have a video
on curry paste 101 i will link to that in the description below okay now let's give it a taste
oh i think that's a great level of sourness so i'm tasting for the curry to be
a little tart a little sweet i'm gonna add a little bit more fish sauce
and it's a little bit too sour right now so i'm gonna add a little bit more sugar
which will balance out the sourness and i haven't added my protein which is going to be shrimp and
the reason is like you do not want shrimp to be sitting here simmering away and then you're taking
like two minutes to taste and adjust because shrimp overcooks really quickly so you kind of
want to get your sauce where it needs to be and then add the shrimp and shrimp generally don't
really you know end up altering too much of the sauce flavor at the end now i'm going to add my
bell pepper which is going to be my bright red vegetable you can add spur chilies if you're
in thailand prick tifa which is more classic i'm going to give that about a minute to soften okay
so let's talk protein so i like to do shrimp you can do squid you can do even fish if you want like
a salmon or a trout might be really good in this okay give that one more minute if you're using
electric electric electric stove top you might even be able to turn it off right now because
you have a lot of residual heat from the cooking from the burner i'm going to turn mine off because
i'm using a cast iron pot which also retains a lot of heat look at them they're done already look how
look how beautiful this curry is it just looks luscious i'm gonna do just a final taste test
perfect before we move on i'd like to tell you about today's sponsor skillshare skillshare is
an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people
it's the perfect place to learn a new skill or to just try out a new hobby skillshare has classes
on tons of different subjects like photography interior design productivity and yes they got
cooking classes too and my favorite part is that most of their classes are less than 60
minutes long so it's really easy to squeeze a class into a busy schedule one of my favorite
that i finished was how to brew an amazing cup of coffee by michael phillips and let me tell you i
was so surprised once i applied what i learned how much better my coffee tastes now the best part is
the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description below will get a free premium
membership for two months so you can try out as many classes as you want and then after that
it's less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription and i will link to everything
in the description below look at that and it's such a weeknight friendly meal too like that
whole thing came together in i don't know like 15 minutes okay enough dishing let's just eat
i am too hungry i'm gonna take some pineapple some shrimp bell peppers are nice but let's
face it that is not why we're here that's nice the shrimp is perfectly cooked not overcooked because
we took care to not let it just kind of hang out in the pot and the pineapple you know how
sometimes you eat pineapple on a pizza and it's just like you bite into the pineapple
and it just doesn't taste of anything other than pineapple but this is different this
the pineapple has sort of become one with the curry sauce so you're getting like tartness
juiciness sweetness fruitiness but it's also not something that just like stands out because the
sauce has kind of penetrated its way into the pineapple piece itself and that is the squeezing
that is so important that is not something you want to skip it really makes a difference that it
doesn't matter if you're using fresh pineapple or canned pineapple you want to squeeze them
anyway so i hope you give that a try the recipe as always will be on hotthaikitchen.com and i'll
link to that below and if you haven't subscribed to the show make sure you do so you don't miss a
recipe like this and click the bell icon as well so you get a notification when i post a new video
thank you as always for watching and i will see you next time for your next delicious thai meal