01.23-Vegan Tom Kha _ The Wicked Kitchen

Welcome back to the Wicked Kitchen, guys. Today we're gonna make this incredible, bold, spicy, aromatic tom kha vegan soup. This is one of my favorite soups. Packed with freshness with the chilies and the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, some galangal root, coconut milk-based soup. This is incredible. You guys don't wanna miss this. Stay tuned. All right, let's get started. So Thai food is one of my absolute favorite types of food. One, because it's so fresh. There's so many herbs and spices and really just boldness of flavor. And this is really what Wicked Healthy is all about. We get a lot of influence from Thai cuisine. So let's start off by heating up this pan to a medium heat. Medium to high or so. So I have some shallots we're gonna start with. You can use any kind of onion, that works as well. I like shallots, a little bit stronger flavor. Little bit of oil in the pan. You don't have to put that much oil. This is a recipe also you can leave out the oil. So if you're going without the oil, just start it off with a hot pan and then you basically hit the dry ingredients in there and then you would hit it with a little bit of vegetable stock to help the caramelization. But we're gonna use a little bit of oil here. Add those shallots. Let's start adding all of these aromatics. So I have the chilies. I like it spiced. So the nice thing about making this from scratch in any kind of hot sauce or soup or any kind of dish with chili, you can add the own amount that you can tolerate, right? I like it very spicy. So I like to add quite a good amount of chili in there. I have some lemongrass. So instead of mincing up the lemongrass, which you can easily do, I just like to bruise it. I like to bruise the lemongrass. And what that's doing is it's releasing a lot of those essential oils. Okay, you're just basically taking the back of the knife. Okay, and I'm just tossing that in. Then we're gonna add that kaffir lime leaf. Gonna crush all those up. Gotta make sure you crush them up. Really brings out, again, a lot of those oils. Let me hit a little bit more oil so it's not burning. All right, make sure that's on a medium heat. It's cooking up those aromatics nice. Oh, that smells so good. All right, so we have the aromatics in there. We're gonna use a little bit of galangal root, which I forgot to add. If you don't have access to galangal, you can use ginger. Okay, so I'm just adding some slices in there. All right, and notice I'm not adding the garlic at this point. I add the garlic after these aromatics are sauteed for quite a while here. The garlic tends to burn pretty quick, so right before I add liquid, I usually add garlic to a dish. So unless you want a little bit of caramelization in there, you can add it a little bit earlier, but I like to add the garlic towards the end of this early stage. So we have the garlic going in. All right, so these have been cooking up on a medium heat for a little bit here. I'm gonna lower it down to a medium low. I have some coconut milk, full fat coconut milk. I like to use full fat coconut milk rather than the light, just because I like that richness of the soup. So I lower it down to low, and I add a couple of cans of coconut milk. It's really, really critical to make sure that you lower the heat down to a medium to low heat when you're adding the coconut milk. You do not ever wanna really boil coconut milk because what would happen is it would separate, okay? So if you're making a curry, any kind of coconut-based soup, if you bring it to a simmer, that's fine, but if you bring it to a roaring boil, the coconut milk will tend to separate with the fat, and so then you'll be left with this thick film of oil on top of your soup, which you wanna absolutely avoid. Okay, so we have the coconut milk went in there. I'm gonna add double the amount of coconut milk as I have in there with water, okay? All right, and I'm gonna use some bouillon. So I have this bouillon that I like to use. This is a onion chicken bouillon, a chicken-free bouillon. You can use a vegetable bouillon, but this is a plant-based chicken bouillon, which is great. Okay, so the next component, so we have the fat in there, we have all the aromatics. I'm gonna add some lime. Lime, I always roll the citrus before I use it. All right, so if you like a little bit of bitter sort of under note there, what you can do is you can add the whole lime. After you squeeze it in, you can drop the lime in there. Have the lime in there while it's simmering. That gives you a little bit of bitter bite at the end. If you wanna avoid that, I tend to avoid it. I'll just squeeze the lime in there. So we have plenty of lime juice, right? Yeah, that was a juicy lime. Typically, I'll put in about two limes in this recipe. That was a very juicy lime, so I'm gonna add some sea salt as well. And now, typically, with a lot of Thai food, a lot of people add sugar, especially to curry paste, and especially to soup also. I'm just gonna add a touch of agave. Okay, you can add a touch of sugar in there if you wish. So we're just gonna let this simmer, and as you let it simmer, what's happening is you're basically reducing it, and you're really marrying all those flavors, and you're just emphasizing all those incredible aromatics. I have some broccoli. You can really highlight any veggies here, but I like adding a little bit of broccoli to the soup. It's just, you know, adds a nice texture to it. All right, separate that broccoli. I'm gonna add some carrots, maybe two. Again, any vegetables you wish in here. I have some tofu, so I have some firm tofu that I've pressed. You don't necessarily need to cook this. You're mostly using the tofu towards the end, because if you sit there and simmer this tofu, it's gonna really break apart in the soup. So I add this tofu at the end after the vegetables are cooked. All right, let's check on that soup. So to finish this off, to finish this off, I have some Thai basil here. You can use regular basil if you wish. It's a really nice way to garnish the soup. Over here, I have some flowering cilantro, as I mentioned. So we're gonna finish the soup with those. We're gonna check on that soup. Let's add the carrots and the broccoli. All right, so with this recipe, you can add any kind of plant protein to it. We're choosing to use tofu in this. You can use plant-based chicken. You can also use some shredded mushrooms that we have highlighted on so many other videos. But I love just the simpleness of some tofu in here. All right, so I add the tofu once the broccoli is nice and vibrant. Okay, that's when you know the broccoli is pretty much cooked. All right, so now that everything has been added in there, it is just, this is ready to go. Just remember, there's all those little inedible pieces in there. You got the lemongrass, the caper lime leaf, and those galangal root. You just let your diners know before you actually serve this, right? Let's go ahead and serve that up. This is lunch right here. Perfect the next day as well. Taking this to work. Mm, so good. Just smells so good. I'm gonna finish that with some of that cilantro, that flowering cilantro. It's so pretty. So pretty and still has that punch of cilantro in there. Okay, a little bit of that Thai basil. I'm just ripping it up. I'm not putting whole leaves. I'm just ripping it up though. Let's add a little bit of chili in there as well, right? I love the spice. A little bit of extra chili. And there you have it, a incredible, aromatic, vegan tom kha soup packed with flavor. All those nice, bold flavors. Be sure you try this recipe. Subscribe to our channel. Till next time. I'm not, it's, it's too hot. All right. I could take a sip of this one.