-Chef Jet Tila's Thai Curry I Recipe Rehab I Everyday Health.

Let's learn how to make Chef Jett's delicious Thai curry. So I'm going to show you how to make a really great curry, but I'm going to twist it a little bit. So I'm going to make a totally vegan Thai green curry just for you. Now, the thing about Thai curries, what people don't know is the curry paste, first of all, usually isn't vegan. Make sure you're getting vegan curry paste, which I've got for you here, okay? Most of the fat that comes from Thai curry, it comes from coconut milk. Now we're using light coconut milk all the way through here. So here we go. Very simple. Starting with a little bit of coconut milk. What we're going to do is I want you to think about coconut milk in this stage as a little bit of frying oil, right? I don't want you just to dump in a bunch of coconut milk. Even though this is light, there still is a little bit of coconut oil and oil tends to rise to the top. So make sure you're not shaking the can too much and just take that top layer. And what we're going to be frying is aromatics from the green curry paste. Cooking any food, you usually sweat your onions and your garlic first and that's exactly what we're doing here. The visual or the thing to remember is cook your curry down thick enough to ladle over rice so it's nice and thick and it doesn't seep through. All right, what goes into curry? Since we're making this vegan for you, we're not going to be using any kind of chicken or beef. This is going to be your source of protein right here. So it's going to be tofu. Now, I do want you to cut it like it would be chicken. So whenever you're cutting anything for Asian food, remember thin tiles. So all that means for me is this, cut it in half and cut it in nice thin tiles. The reason is you want a lot of surface area. You want all that amazing curry. You want to give it something to grab onto and that's why I'm doing thin tiles here. And I know you're thinking, man, that curry is really boiling, but you want that. Again, you want this to start reducing a little bit to keep it at a simmer. And now I can really focus on vegetables. Now, I'm going to actually fortify aromatics. So I do want some nice thin sliced onions. Not too thick because the onions, I want them to kind of melt right into this curry and add another layer of sweetness, another layer of maybe pungentness. I want to really up the flavors here. How about a bell pepper? We got to get into vegetables now. And I've got three tiles here. Getting rid of all seeds and kind of the inner spines. And I want slices here. I'm just going to take these and slice them nice and thin. And it's always a good idea to slice the inside of the bell pepper, not the waxy side, because you don't want your knife catching. The inside slice is a lot easier. So let's put those right in. And then a not so well-known ingredient. This is called kefir lime leaf. Now, you know them because they look like two leaves stuck together. Incredible intense citrus smell. And this is how you unlock the flavors out of the kefir lime leaves. This is a really fancy cut called chiffonade. Don't worry about that. Watch what I do. I'm just laying the leaves on top of each other and rolling them up into a really, really tight little parcel. And I'm going to try to slice it as thin as possible. So kefir lime leaves are very reedy. They're a little tough. And by slicing them so thin, they look like blades of grass. And that's going to let them or allow them to melt right into this curry. So look at that. Just like that. If you can't get kefir lime leaf, take a little bit of lime zest. And what you're going to do is take a peeler and just, you know, aggressively, make sure you get a nice piece, a nice even piece of zest. Just the green part. You don't want the white part because that's really bitter. Just take a little bit of zest. And guess what? You're going to do the same thing. Nice, nice thin little slice. And add that right in there. And the last vegetable today is going to be bamboo shoots. And these are simple. They come in the tin. You can get them as slices. It's almost done, believe it or not, because there is no meat to worry about. And now we're talking about seasonings. How do you season curry? You think about Thai food in four flavors, right? We have this really cool word in Thai called yum. Hot, sour, salty, sweet. All together in perfect harmony means yum, okay? So let's think about it in that yum profile, all right? Salty is actually coming from a little bit of the curry paste. And we're going to need some soy sauce. Just a touch, not a lot, because you don't want this too salty. Remember, there is salt in the curry paste. Now we think about sweet. A little bit of natural sugar works really well. And then the last ingredient, we want a little sour. And you don't want this too sour. This is called tamarind. You're just going to cut off a little piece. And remember, it's fruit taken out of the shell. So it's really kind of the pulp of the fruit. You'll take a little bit. And what I want you to do is to just marry it with a little bit of water. And you're making a tamarind liquid, a cooking tamarind liquid, all right? And let's see how our curry is doing. So I'm saving the tofu for last because I don't want the tofu to break down. I really just want a nice, you know, let's see. If you eat about four ounces of protein per serving, that's about good. And remember, you can up these as you need. But I didn't want to put the tofu in too early because I didn't want to break it down. I didn't want it to get broken and mealy. Now I'm going to show you another flavor booster that you might not have played with before. This is Thai basil. And all I'm doing is taking a few leaves and then rolling them over. And you don't want to cut them tight. I just want you to cut them so they release that amazing anise flavor and let them just kind of melt into the curry. This is done. Thai curry comes together, if you know what you're doing, so quickly. So what am I going to serve curry with? Rice, of course. And I precooked a little bit of the basmati. And I'm just going to do a little basmati off to the side. So now I'm going to bring in the curry. Remember, eat with your eyes. So let's find a really amazing garnish for this. I'm going back to kaffir lime leaf. I'm going to take a nice piece of kaffir lime leaf, chiffonade. Super fine. So a little bit of kaffir lime, a little bit of basil. And that's vegan Thai curry done my way. Ready, set, cook. Subscribe or watch another Recipe Rehab how-to video right now. And check out What the Heck Are You Eating? Where Joy Bauer breaks down the good and the bad in your favorite foods.