By: Andreea
Savory, Uncategorized

Thai Prawn Soup

I first saw a Thai prawn soup from a fellow blogger Hayat (hayateria.com). It looked so good and I really wanted to try to make something similar. And as you can probably observe from this article, I did. I did not make it exactly the same, I did switch some things up, and I also made the curry paste myself, which obviously brought a different flavour palette that it is more adjustable to our own liking. The curry paste that I made is in a separate blog post, as I think it is quite versatile, it does not only apply to this soup, but also to chicken soups or curries, maybe with some fish, it really lets you play with flavours.

According to how many of the components of this dish you have ready to use, it will be quite fast. For example, the base of the soup is a chicken soup, which in my case came out of my freezer, so I only had to defrost and heat it up. If you are interested in my very typical chicken soup, let me know and I can make a post all about it. But let’s take it step by step.

Ingredients:

  • ~26 prawns
  • 500 ml chicken soup
  • 150 ml water (optional, I added it so it does not reduce too much)
  • 400 ml coconut milk
  • 1 medium onion
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 3tbsp red curry paste (recipe here)
  • 1 tsp chili paste for extra heat
  • 1 tsp oyster sauce
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp coconut oil or a neutral flavor one
  • noodles for serving – I used wheat

Method:

  1. Prep the prawns. In my case I had the prawns in shells (they were not pre cooked) so I had to prep them: cut the shell on the top, up until close to the tail. By doing this you will slightly butterfly the prawn and reveal the vein. With a toothpick I pull the vein upwards to remove it. I then take the shell off, by pulling from the tail, that will remove the rest of the vein left close to the tail. Don’t throw away the shells yet.
  2. Make the curry paste. I made mine with the recipe here, you can use a store bought version too.
  3. If you don’t have any soup on hand you can quickly make one out of a few veggies and maybe a bit of soup concentrate. I used chicken soup that I made and had frozen. I left it to defrost and then heat it up in a pot. I added 100-150 ml of water to it as mine was quite concentrated. When the soup is getting close to a boil, put the prawn shells in and lightly simmer until the shells are nice and pink.
  4. Strain the soup.
  5. Dice the onion and mince the garlic.
  6. Add the coconut oil in a pot. Add the diced onion and cook for 2-3 minutes then add the minced garlic. Once the onion and garlic are nicely caramelized, I added 3 tablespoons of my curry paste. I did not add any other aromatics as the curry paste that I made was fragrant enough. I mixed them up and cooked the mixture for 3 more minutes.
  7. Add the soup on top of the curry mix and then add the coconut milk. Stir stir stir and bring to simmer.
  8. Add the shrimps to poach in the soup.
  9. I added one tsp of oyster sauce and a bit of salt to lift the flavours.
  10. Taste and adjust heat if you want to, I added a bit more chili paste.
  11. Let it simmer until the prawns are cooked.
  12. To serve, you can prep some noodles, I used wheat thin noodles, same ones as for the ramen and garnished with some green onion.

All in all it is an easy recipe and if you have some things already prepared, it is quite fast as well.

One suggestion I received from some friends was to add a small shopping list on where to find certain ingredients that maybe are not available in all stores, therefore, I will try to make a small list with links at the end of the post in case you are interested in what I use in the recipes. The links will be for online stores in Romania that hold the products that I use.

Shopping list: