Servings: 4 · Prep Time: 20 mins · Cooking Time: 30 mins
Total Time: 50 mins

Soups

Our tom kha gai soup recipe (coconut chicken soup) is an absolute favourite. It is bursting with flavour, it's rich and creamy yet tangy and salty. It also tastes very authentic.

Ingredients

  • Chicken Breasts
  • Chicken stock (1 litre)
  • Mushrooms (handfull)
  • Red Onion (1 or 2)
  • Galangal (50g)
  • Basil (a few leaves)
  • Lime
  • Fish sauce (3 tbsp)
  • Coconut Milk (1 can)
  • Kaffir Leaves
  • Homemade Chilli Sauce (2 tsp)
  • Stevia (1 tsp (optional))
  • Lemongrass (1 stalk)
  • Coriander Root (2 tbsp (optional))

Method

Remove the outer layers and cut off stalk and then finely chop up the lemongrass or you can julienne it. Cut the kaffir leaves into strips.

There are two way to make this soup. If you don't like to eat the lemongrass and the galangal, then add this to the stock first and cook for around 30 minutes to extract the flavour and then sieve the stock to remove the ingredients. Then continue to the following steps. My preference, however, is to leave it all in the soup and lets the guest decide whether to eat them or not!

Add the chicken to your stock as soon as it boils. Also add the sliced galangal , lemongrass, crushed or stripped kaffir leaves and garlic at this point. In-fact add everything except the coconut milk and mushrooms.

If you really like the taste of lime, you can grate the skin (zest) of the lime into the soup. If you want it a little more spicy, add some home add chilli sauce.

Make sure the chicken is well cooked, then add the coconut milk toward the end (don't boil it) and the mushrooms.

Tip: For a thicker creamier soup, add less stock and more coconut milk.
Tip. if you can't find galangal, then substitute with ginger.
Tip: Experiment with tweaking the amount of lime juice and fish sauce. These are the two main ingredients after the chicken and the galangal.