How to Make Thai Green Curry

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Thai Green Curry - Most Popular Thai Food?

Thai Green Curry (Gaeng Kieow Waan) is perhaps the most popular of all Thai dishes with foreigners, certainly after thirteen years living in Thailand it is still one of my favourites. Indeed at various times Thai Green Curry has been voted the number one fast food in the United Kingdom. Actually, to refer to Thai Green Curry a fast food is in fact rather misleading as any meal made from fresh, healthy ingredients such as go into a Thai Green Curry is a long way removed from the junk foods that I would consider as fast foods - have you tried it?

Here I describe, with the help of my wife, the ingredients and how to cook the meal: in fact, a recipe for Thai Green Curry.

For those looking for more Thai recipes, click here: Appon's Thai Food

Look, Delicious Thai Green Curry 

Before describing the cooking process let's take a look at some photos of Thai Green Curry. Traditionally, green curry is a pale, creamy green curry and contains chicken, lemongrass, coriander, lime and eggplant. This combination makes for a wonderful fusion of flavours, textures and colours.

Take a look for yourself in the photographs below.

Green curry with rice by aSIMULAtor

Green curry with ric...

Kathay shopping spree by Rubber Slippers In Italy

Kathay shopping spre...

Thawt Mun Pla Thai redfish cakes - Chat Thai, Haymarket AUD9 by avlxyz

Thawt Mun Pla Thai r...

Camp dinner by sporkist

Camp dinner

IXS_8461 by acme

IXS_8461

Thai lunch by sebilden

Thai lunch

Thai green and red curry by Thox

Thai green and red c...

Thai green curry with prawns by WordRidden

Thai green curry wit...

Thai green curry by adactio

Thai green curry

Thai green curry by adactio

Thai green curry

automatically generated by Flickr

Thai Green Curry - The Ingredients 

This is the list of ingredients for Thai Green Curry as prescribed by my wife.


  • 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

  • 1 tablespoon of soft dark brown sugar

  • 2 lemongrass stalks

  • 500g/1lb boneless chicken

  • 6-8 kaffir lime leaves

  • 1 eggplant

  • 400ml/14fl oz coconut milk

  • Thai fish sauce

  • coriander

  • 0.5-1 lime

  • 2 tablespoons of green curry paste - for those that are concerned about not getting an authentic taste, don't worry, most Thais buy theirs from the market or a shop!


  • With Thai food growing in popularity it is now relatively easy to find the basic ingredients for any Thai dish in most western countries. When I first took my wife (she's from Bangkok) into a supermarket in UK she was quite shocked (and very pleased) to find Thai staples such as Fish Sauce, Coconut Milk, Chillies, Lemongrass and Jasmine Rice all stocked.

    So, get down to the shops and buy the following to make your own delicious Thai Green Curry; even I can do it and I once cooked a pie in its plastic wrapper!

    Online Asian Food Stockist 

    Thai Green Curry - the recipe 

  • Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan.

  • Add the green curry paste and sugar and cook over a fairly high heat for about a minute, stirring with the lemongrass, if using.

  • Reduce the heat slightly and stir in the chicken pieces and lime leaves or zest until coated in the paste.

  • Add the coconut milk, fish sauce or soy sauce and bring to a simmer, cooking for 25-30 minutes until thickened slightly.

  • Stir in the coriander and lime juice.

  • Check for seasoning, adding more fish sauce or soy sauce if needed.

  • The curry is now best left to sit for a few minutes so the sauce becomes creamier; you will taste the true flavours of the curry paste ingredients when it's slightly cooler.

  • Serve with lots of fragrant Thai jasmine rice.


  • It's as simple as that!

    Not Got a Wok? Get One! 

    For the best results cook Thai Green Curry in a wok.

    How Hot Do You Like Your Thai Green Curry? 

    Vote For Your Favourite Level of Spiciness

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    Cooking Thai Green Curry on Video 

    If the recipe is not simple enough for you then here is a video to watch. It is a slightly different recipe but close enough.

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    curated content from YouTube

    Thai Cook Books 

    Having mastered the art of Thai Green Curry and found how easy it is, any of these cook books will help extend ones repetoir of Thai dishes.

    Simple Thai Cookery

    Amazon Price: (as of 11/11/2009) Buy Now

    Original Thai Cookbook

    Amazon Price: (as of 11/11/2009) Buy Now

    Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant

    Amazon Price: $16.95 (as of 11/11/2009) Buy Now

    Keo's Thai Cuisine

    Amazon Price: $15.56 (as of 11/11/2009) Buy Now

    Mmmmmmm, beer! 

    The flavours of Thai food lend themselves to being accompanied by beer (I am not making this up). Typically, in Thailand, people drink Thai lager with Thai Green Curry.

    In Thailand Singha Beer is the biggest selling lager and most commonly consumed with food. However, there are other Thai beers including Beer Chang and Leo Beer. If you can't obtain these your local lager will be a perfectly good substitute.

    Read about different beers in Thailand here: Thai Beer Brands Test.

    Very Asia: An Asian Food Supermarket Online 

    More Thai Green Curry Video Clips 

    curated content from YouTube

    Culinary Voting Opportunity 

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    Thai Food Link List 

    Joy's Thai Food Recipes
    Recipes from a well-known Thai cook.
    Appon's Thai Food
    A great blog with a never ending supply of Thai food recipes illustrated with mouth-watering photographs.
    Temple of Thai
    Thai recipes and food shop.
    Thai Table
    All things Thai food.
    Thai Food Online
    Stockists of Thai food and recipes.

    More Thai Food Lenses 

    Lots of Lensmasters Are Enthused by Thai Food

    Please Leave a Comment 

    Please let me know what you think about this lens here.

    Apaihai wrote...

    My favourite is Tom Yum Goong.

    ReplyPosted October 31, 2009

    nickupton wrote...

    I have to confess to preferring beer Chang.[in reply to Pastiche]

    ReplyPosted October 31, 2009

    Pastiche wrote...

    Ah, yes, Singha goes well with green curry ... and matsaman, and spicy tofu with vegetables ... etc. I do love Thai food - and am saving this recipe plus the Appon site is now bookmarked. Thank you for the "authentic" cooking tips as well.

    ReplyPosted October 19, 2009

    Lensmaster

    Gully wrote

    This is one of the best dishes from Thailand, although there are plenty to choose from.

    Reply Posted August 15, 2009

    Lensmaster

    Kelly Pritchard wrote

    I make Thai Green Curry a lot and your recipe is spot on. I started using ThaiKits from www.thaikit.co.uk as they supply everything you need except the chicken and vegetables. So I can always quickly make Thai food without a trip to the shops to get all the ingredients.
    A really great variation is to add a green curry sauce (Paste Coconut Fish Sauce Sugar etc) to Prawn/Chicken Fried Rice, best if you make the sauce thick by just using the thicker coconut cream.
    I had this once in Thailand and then copied it when I got home, tastes really great.

    Reply Posted April 08, 2009

    view all 8 comments

    Thai Street Food 

    Vatch's Thai Street Food

    Recipes for authentic Thai street food, meals like those you can grab for 30 baht or so on the streets of Bangkok.

    Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 11/12/2009) Buy Now

    About The Lens Author 

    Lensmaster nickupton, aka nick upton, has been a member since June 23 2007, has rated 144 lenses, favorited 71, and has created 63 lenses from scratch. This member's top-ranked page is "The Sneetches by Dr Seuss". See all my lenses

    by nickupton




    I have been living in Thailand on and off since 1997 and fell in love with Thai food from the outset.

    Back in Britain, studying for my degree... (more)

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