If you think making your own Thai Red Curry Paste is beyond your capabilities, think again and try this recipe with my method. With simple ingredients, I’ll show you how to do it easily!

Making our own Thai Red Curry Paste was part of my growing up in Thailand. We usually made it fresh right before we cooked the main course, and only made enough for one-time use.

In my childhood, we were required to help in the kitchen to prepare meals almost every day. To make curry pastes, my mom told us the amount of ingredients without measuring them. Everyone got a task for the preparation, and the most responsible sister at that time got to pound them into a mixture.

(I usually did the garlic peeling, or sat on the back of a wooden “rabbit” (stool for shredding coconut) to help add weight while my mom or sisters shredded coconut.)

My mom tells us that good curry paste can determine how curry dishes will be, so we have to make sure that all the ingredients are ground up well. That’s why pounding is very important.

I still remember the first time my mom let me try pounding curry paste. I felt so grown up and important. That day at dinner time, my dad said “wow today’s curry dish is extra tasty, I’m wondering who did the curry pounding.” Even though the paste didn’t turn out that good, but it felt so good to hear such a compliment. I was very happy and shouted “I did!”

Years went by as a grew up with a busy life. I never put effort into making my own Thai Red Curry Paste at all as it’s so convenient to buy. There are many brands to choose from, but most of them contain things I don’t want to put into my body anymore: preservatives, low-quality ingredients, cheap oil, and then all the packaging.

As I commit to produce less waste from my own cooking, making my own curry paste is also a goal. However, making any kind of curry paste from scratch takes time. You might feel overwhelmed and intimidated with unfamiliar ingredients, but please don’t be. There are so many good benefits of making your own foods, especially when you can choose the quality of the ingredients, and what exactly you want to put in.

Ready to give it a try, here are things you need to make Thai Red Curry Paste:

2-3 dried big chillies.
6-8 thai red chillies
1 tsp (5 g) salt
½ tsp. (2.5 g) coriander seed.
½ tsp. (2.5 g) white peppercorn
1 small kaffir lime (use the skin only)
1 TBSP (14 g) finely chopped galangal (about 1 thumb size)
3-4 TBSP ( 43-57 g) of finely chopped lemongrass. (I use 1 stalk)
3-4 TBSP ( 43-57 g) chopped shallot and garlic (I use 1 head of a medium size of each).
ingredients you need

How:

Remove the chilli seeds, and soak them in a bowl of water.
Finely cut, chop and prepare all the ingredients above.
In a mortar & pestle, pound each ingredients finely. To make it easy, start from the most difficult ingredients as following: chilies and salt, coriander seeds and peppercorn, kaffir lime skin, galangal, lemongrass, shallot, and finally garlic. If you don’t have a mortar & pestle, you can use a small food processor instead.
When everything is well ground, store the paste in a glass jar and use it according to the recipes
Keep it in a fridge up to 2 weeks, but freeze it if you don’t use it soon enough.
remove the chili seeds and soak in water

Finely prepare all the ingredients

pound everything ’til grounded

voila, homemade Thai red curry paste!