T
he wind was howling, the weather was miserable and my partner and I were feeling stuffed up and uninspired. Fortunately, she was feeling inspired enough to know she wanted soup.
We were tired of the same old things, especially plain chicken soup. After cracking open a few cookbooks, we alighted on the solution, which, even better, didn’t involve gluten: curry noodle soup.
Despite the terrible weather, I trudged out in the elements to retrieve the few things not already sitting in our hanging fruit basket or in the refrigerator: chicken, cilantro, ginger and coconut milk.
This soup, which can be made with yellow curry, red curry or green curry, is warming.
It can be as spicy, or not as spicy, as you want. If you want it spicy, add more peppers, use red curry, or both. If you want it less spicy, go the yellow curry route and leave out any spicy peppers.
If you want to go mostly vegetarian, swap the tofu for chicken and if you want to go completely vegetarian and vegan, swap out the fish sauce for some soy sauce (and consider adding some mushrooms).
Do you really want to blow out your sinuses? Use red curry and add a bunch of chopped hot peppers — jalapeño, Serrano or habanero.
The soup is flavorful and with coconut milk and a little citrus, it’s a wonderful flavor profile.
The soup base is chicken stock and coconut milk. It gets its flavor, and most of its salt, from curry paste. You can swap out the noodles for your personal preference, but I found rice stick noodles to be perfect for the dish.
If you’ve never bought and used curry paste, I highly encourage you to do so. It keeps for a long time and is incredibly versatile. As an example, I also use yellow curry paste to smother potatoes and chicken, bake them, and serve with taziki.
This soup recipe is easy. Brown the chicken, throw all the ingredients together in a Dutch oven, let it simmer for a bit, then add the noodles.
Using up some vegetables in your refrigerator? Let it simmer for a little longer before adding the noodles to let the vegetables soften. The harder the veggies, the longer the simmer, with potatoes and carrots requiring the most time.
Ingredients
Olive oil
1 ½ lbs. chicken breast, cut into ½-inch pieces
Salt to taste
3 tbsp. curry paste (red, yellow or green)
3 tbsp. minced garlic
2 green chiles, diced
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, cut into 1/8-inch slices
1 tbsp. grated ginger
1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz.)
6 cups chicken broth
6 oz. rice noodles
1 tbsp. fish sauce
2 tsp. brown sugar
3 green onions, sliced
½ cup chopped cilantro
¼ cup basil leaves
2 tbsp. lime juice
Optional: 1-2 diced jalapeños or other spicy chiles to increase spice level
Optional: other veggies as available, like eggplant, bell peppers, etc.
Directions
Heat some olive oil in the Dutch oven on medium heat, season the chicken with salt and pepper, add the chicken to the Dutch oven and cook until it begins to brown, 2-4 minutes. Set aside the chicken.
Add the peppers, onions and other vegetables until tender, cook 3-5 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and ginger, add a little extra oil, cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Stir in the chicken broth and coconut milk and scrape any browned bits from the bottom.
Add in the chicken, bring it all to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes if there are no carrots or extra vegetables. Simmer longer, depending on which vegetables are added, until they soften, 20 minutes to 1 hour.
Once the vegetables have softened, stir in the rice noodles, fish sauce and brown sugar and cook until noodles are tender, 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the green onions, cilantro, basil and lime juice. Season to taste as needed.
Serve.
Recipe adapted from damndelicious.net