I am a pretty decent cook and I have consistent success with Chinese and Indian.
I love Thai curry. I make Thai curry. But I find that it’s hard to get the flavors right, and it seems to be all or nothing. Either the broth is bursting with coconutty, kafir-limey, galanga-y, lime grassy goodness–or it tastes like salt and water.
I find this true not only of my own successes and failures but also of curry in actual Thai restaurants. I’d say it’s the most scatter-shot type of dish out there. I had a curry in a restaurant recently that was positively exploding with flavor. I was thinking, “How did they do this?” But I’ve found “professionally produced” curries to be quite poor, too. More often than not, they’re really not that great.
So if it were only I that was screwing up, I’d just assume I didn’t know what I was doing (which I think is true anyway), but actual chefs flub it too.
By the way, I made my own coconut milk for the first time today. I was hoping for a “bursting with extra coconut flavor” effect, but that really didn’t happen. It was a huge PITA and the result was probably worse than canned. I mean, it wasn’t horrible, and I don’t think I actually did anything wrong. But I’m thinking I might just stick with canned in the future. Dunno.
I’ve never tried making curry at home, but I can attest to that bit about restaurants messing it up on occasion. I’ve been to Thai restaurants a couple times when the curry tasted like, not just salt and water but soap and water. It was weak and not tasty at all. When I mentioned it to the owners, the cook came out to tell me that it depends on the curry that comes to them. So I guess they don’t really make it from scratch or something. I’ve been back to the same restaurant many times after that and had some very good curry and some pretty lackluster curry.
I just use the Taste of Thai curry paste foil packets and mix into the coconut milk, to taste. I really don’t even follow a recipe, and what I come up with ranges from OK to OMG! I-could-eat-this-every-day. I wish it was as good with the ‘lite’ coconut milk.
The lazy curry I make with Mae Ploy paste seems pretty consistent, but I suspect it would fall under the category of “salt and water” in your book (or at best, “salt and coconut”).
I’ve never had that experience. I’m not sure how you can get all those ingredients to just taste like “salt and water.” I mean, if you’re using the same recipe all the time and following the same technique, than the answer has to be the quality and flavor of the ingredients you’re using.
Personally, while I do Thai curry from scratch every once in awhile, I find that using Mae Ploy or a similar paste and then adding any combination of fresh shallots, thai chilis, lemongrass, and galangal (or even ginger, in a pinch), cilantro stems, kaffir lime leaves, etc., that you’ve pounded in a mortar (or food processor) does a ton to perk up the fresh flavor. Obviously, if you use all those ingredients, you might as well make the whole thing from scratch, but just a couple of those in their fresh form (especially the lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves) can give it enough fresh flavor to make it pop.
I used to have the same problem with thai red curry-- it was overpoweringly coconut milk flavored. I wondered what the secret was…
Then I found a recipe that made me realize what I was doing wrong: you need to first brown some bone-in chicken pieces in a pot, then cover with equal parts chicken stock and coconut milk and simmer for a couple hours. I used to think in terms of stir-fry when making the curry sauce- cook it quickly. But the slow simmering mellows out the coconut flavor.
I simmer up a big batch and freeze it in portions. Then I add red curry paste, fish sauce and spices to the chicken-coconut base when I make the stir-fry (don’t do the long simmering part with curry paste and fish sauce added!) Tastes to me as authentic as a curry from a restaurant.
You’re the only one who has mentioned fish sauce; it’s an integral part of Thai curry- it’s basically curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce and sugar, with some stuff like galangal, kaffir lime and onions/shallots thrown in as well.
It adds a huge dose of umami to the dish that rounds out the coconut milk flavor quite nicely.
I appreciate your advice on adding fresh ingredients. I do the same thing, almost to the point of making it all from scratch, as you mentioned.
I think there is a genuine scientific question behind this all. I was pondering this last night as I was going to sleep. I cook a lot of Indian food too, and the only dish I’ve found all that challenging was dal makhani, which involves a lot of butter and cream. I’ve gotten it right and gotten it wrong, seemingly at random.
So I think it’s a matter of getting the aromatics to “pop” as they are suspended in the fat. In the case of Thai curry, it’s the broth and coconut milk. The “salt and water” effect happens when the flavors just do not pop out of that fat.
One thing I’ve found that applies not just to Thai curry but just about any cuisine, including soup, that involves a liquid consistency is that the dish tastes better when it reheated after being allowed to cool completely. Eating it piping hot or cooled down from piping hot seems to cause a relatively flavorless dish. Eating warmed up from room temperature seems to bring out the flavor.
My guess is that these temperature factors greatly affect how the aromatics interact with the liquid and its fat content. So I am going to try working with this phenomenon and try to get some better results.
I actually prefer the taste of Mae Ploy green curry paste and coconut milk to the Trader Joes simmer sauce (assuming that is the product being talked about.) From what I remember of the TJ’s product, it’s pretty subdued in comparison to the Mae Ploy and coconut milk.