Tom Yum Kung – a Thai soup
In Thailand many soups are eaten and also the main courses are often rather liquid because they are served with a lot of sauce. For example, the famous Green Thai Curry.
Tom Yum is the name of the soup and Kung means prawns.
The same soup is also made with chicken or fish, which is called Tom Yum Gai and Tom Yum Pla.
Tom Yum Kung is sweet-sour because of the various ingredients
Coconut cream and onions make it sweet, lime juice makes it sour. Then – thanks to chilli – it is spicy and the fish sauce (or soy sauce) makes it salty.
This means that you can season the Tom Yum Kung with these ingredients to your own taste.
By the way, you can find sugar on every table in Thailand.
Bought Tom Yum Kung Paste is usually not vegetarian but contains dried shrimps. But you can easily make the paste yourself. You can find the recipe here.
So here is the recipe:
Sweet and sour soup with shrimps or Quorn (Tom Yum Kung)
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups of water
- 1 stick of lemongrass cut into 2 cm long pieces
- 3 slices of fresh galangal if you don't find any galangal, ginger will do
- 1-3 teaspoons Tom Yum paste depending on desired spiciness
- ½ Cup of coconut cream
- 3-4 fresh shrimps cut open at the back or 3 Quorn-filets
- ½ Onion chopped
- 3 chilli peppers depending on the desired spiciness
- 1 tomato cut into 1 cm pieces
- 1 small lime only juice
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
- Coriander leaves to taste
- 1 spring onion quartered
- 3 kaffir lime leaves
Instructions
- Bring water, lemongrass, galangal and Tom Yum paste to the boil in a pan.
- Add coconut cream and onion pieces and simmer for 3 minutes.
- Add shrimps or quorn, bring to the boil again and continue cooking until the shrimps are pink.
- Add the chilli and tomato pieces, lime juice and fish sauce and continue cooking for another minute.
- Turn off the heat and add coriander leaves, spring onions and kaffir lime leaves.
- Mix everything well and serve.
