How to Make Curry Paste from Scratch at Home – Tips and Tools to Use

The rhythmic pounding of my late grandmother’s century-old mortar is as familiar to me as any lullaby. The sound of stone against stone, reducing shallots, garlic, galangal, lemongrass and Thai chilies into a paste and releasing the spicy fragrance of shrimp paste is almost a Proustian memory, something I can taste.

And yet, in my adult life, I have often found myself turning to canned curry paste in my daily cooking. maesri It is my favorite brand; It’s what my mom also uses when she doesn’t feel like wielding my grandmother’s mortar and pestle. Canned curry paste makes curry an easy weeknight dinner, especially if you pair it with quick-cooking proteins like salmon or tofu. Homemade curry paste, on the other hand, requires time to gather the numerous ingredients and some arm muscles to reduce the tough, stringy lemongrass and makrut lime to a paste that can be melted into coconut milk.

But I feel like I’m avoiding my grandmother’s memory by not trying to replicate her recipe, so I recently tried making curry gluing from scratch, using both his mortar and pestle and a food processor to help me along the way. It’s the way James Beard Award winner Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon makes curry paste at her Philadelphia restaurant Kalaya. “There’s no need to use a krok,” says Suntaranon, referencing the Thai word for mortar, “because the kroks in America aren’t big enough and the wooden ones aren’t heavy enough.” Instead, opt for a large food processor to prepare large quantities in your restaurant.

“The way I look at it is that if I had to pound every batch of curry paste I make, I wouldn’t do it that often,” says Pim Techamuanvivit, owner of Michelin-starred Kamin and Kin Khao and Nari and executive . chef at Nahm in Bangkok. “It’s fun to do it once in a while, but it’s also painful.”

At first, I really wanted to do it the hard way, like my grandmother would have done. The advice my mom gave me is to chop the ingredients as finely as possible to make it easier to incorporate them into the mortar and pestle. The tricky part is how complicated all the ingredients are; lemongrass is very difficult to break down, dried makrut lime peel is tough, and galangal definitely requires some extra effort. The actual punch also requires some technique: “You’re not really punching by pure force,” Techamuanvivit says. “You point to one side; “That friction helps process the ingredients.”

When I try to make my own curry paste using my grandmother’s mortar and pestle, it is immediately clear that I have not mastered this technique, as half-pound chunks of lemongrass and dangerous streaks of Thai chili peppers fly out. Also, the muscles in my shoulders begin to throb. There is a little respite when incorporating milder ingredients, such as shallots and shrimp paste, but still my curry paste was lumpy and my grandmother’s mortar and pestle began to overflow. I accept and transfer my mix to a food processor.

“To me, if you’re only going to make curry paste if you can blend it in your blender, you’ll still get better results than opening a can,” says Techaumanvivit. If award-winning chefs tell me to use a food processor, it’s okay to use a food processor.

Once it’s in the food processor, the curry paste blends easily. I pulse it because I don’t want it to be completely smooth. This is one of the benefits of making curry paste from scratch: you can control its overall texture. And its ingredients too. “For me, it’s about really knowing what’s in my curry pastes, being able to adjust and increase or decrease certain components,” says Techaumanvivit. That includes the spice level, the spiciness of the shrimp paste, and the spiciness of the garlic.

When the curry paste is completely mixed, I remove the lid from the food processor. The smell is intoxicating: salty and salty, herbaceous and bright. It permeates the entire kitchen. The total time it took, from chopping the ingredients to mashing them and throwing them into the food processor, was about half an hour. The hardest part might have been gathering the ingredients, and even these were relatively accessible. But does curry paste really taste better than the canned stuff, enough to justify making it from scratch?

To answer this question, I decide to make two versions of panang chicken, one with canned curry paste and one with red curry paste that I made, to see which one was better and if it’s really worth making curry paste from scratch. When I open the can of Maesri, the aroma is not as present as fresh curry paste. The paste itself is very soft and a little oily; The color is a much brighter orange than my new version. Blooming the paste in hot coconut oil activates it a little, but I still don’t find the smell as appealing as my homemade version. Maybe it’s my own nostalgia for my grandmother’s cooking, but canned curry smells just one note.

The final dish is totally adequate. The flavor is sweeter than I prefer and lacks spice, but for a weeknight meal it is extremely easy to prepare. “There are times when you can use canned curry paste to add volume,” says Suntaranon. “It’s okay to use it as a base and then add the other elements to make it your own.” Suggest splashes of fish sauce, fresh makrut lime leaves cut into thin strips, and sliced ​​Thai chilies to brighten up the canned curry. I do this, which improves the flavor, but it’s not a dish I’m completely excited about.

There is a big difference when I make panang with homemade curry paste. The aroma is immediately sharp, the hints of shrimp paste and chiles obvious. Blooming the pasta in coconut oil makes it stronger and I could detect the layers of shallots, lemongrass and cilantro. What I found tricky about homemade curry paste was determining how much to use; the canned curry had instructions, but with the homemade version I was using my intuition, like my grandmother used to cook. There was nothing to worry about though – the curry was definitely the best I’ve ever made. The shade of the curry was much paler than the version made with curry paste, a dull pink hue rather than bright red, but the flavor was much more assertive.

I think curry paste is a great introduction to trying curry at home, especially for people who have trouble finding the many ingredients needed to make fresh curry paste. “If you’re just cooking at home and trying to make dinner, use curry paste,” says Techaumanvivit. “I’m not judging you. “We’ve all used canned curry paste.”

However, making fresh curry paste from scratch It’s surprisingly easy, especially when using a food processor. You can make a large batch and freeze the paste in ice cube trays so that every time you want to make curry you have the paste ready on hand. That’s what I’ve done; In the food processor and mortar, I have made enough curry paste for at least eight meals. If you’re going to make it this way, make sure you don’t add salt when making the curry paste, a tip I learned from Suntaranon. “It will draw water and crystallize,” he explains. “Salt the curry paste when using it.”

I can wholeheartedly recommend making curry paste from scratch. It’s hard to beat the freshness of the ingredients and the ability to customize your base to your preferences (which for me means extra chiles and shrimp paste). “Think of it as an adventure and play with it,” says Techamaunvivit. “I’d like people to understand that a whole world of flavors would open up if they tried making their own curry paste.”

lily fossett is a freelance illustrator based in Bath, UK. She is passionate about portraying narrative in her illustrations and uses digital media to explore color and texture.