It's Mark Weins here in Bangkok, Thailand
and I'm going to share with you
an authentic Thai recipe for a chili curry
made with pork ribs
that has some massive flavor.
(upbeat music)
In Thai, this dish is called gaeng khua prik seekong moo
and it's a southern Thai dish.
It is a dried chili curry.
We're gonna first pound up the curry paste
then we're gonna cook it together with pork ribs.
You can use pork ribs or you can use chicken,
you can use any other meat of choice.
But this is an amazing dish,
it has so much flavor,
and it's a dish my mother-in-law loves to make.
So I am excited to share the recipe with you here today.
(speaking in foreign language)
So the first step is gonna be to pound up
all of the ingredients for the curry paste.
These are Thai bird's eye chilies dried.
(speaks in foreign language)
first, the thing you gotta do with dried chilies,
take a big handful
and just soak them in water.
(speaking in foreign language)
Oh, okay, until they get kinda soft.
Kinda like rehydrating them.
You wanna soak those dried chilies for about five minutes
until they get nice and soft
and that way they'll be easier to pound.
And now just to prepare the garlic and some shallots.
And so you just peel off the skin
and then we're gonna pound that all together.
And next step, this is fresh turmeric root.
And she's just very roughly peeling the skin
of the turmeric and you can see
just that beautiful orange color below there,
oh I love turmeric.
For southern Thai food,
there's turmeric in almost every dish.
Next step for lemon grass.
She's just slicing it thinly so that we can pound it easier
when we're making the curry paste.
This in Thai is called rak phakchi
and this is coriander roots.
Again just slice them up.
This is old galangal.
So you can see how it's even tough to cut it,
it's so hard.
But that's gonna provide some awesome flavor
for this curry paste.
Okay next up, we just have some black pepper.
And we have two more dry spices,
coriander seeds and cumin.
And she's just gonna quickly head over to the wok
and give them a dry fry for about 30 seconds
just to make them nice and fragrant.
So in goes the cumin and in goes
about a teaspoon or so of coriander seeds.
Oh, that aroma of spice
is a beautiful thing.
The next thing you've gotta do is the really fun part,
to pound up the curry paste.
She said that the chilies are nice and soft.
They've been sitting in the water for about five minutes
while we prepared all the other ingredients.
And then you can set them on the plate as well.
That's like breathing fresh new life into chilies.
We're just gonna pound up everything,
but she said to first
add like kind of half of the ingredients.
I think the mortar is not quite big enough
to fit everything.
So then sprinkle with a spoon of salt.
And at this stage,
it's time to ground and pound.
Take the mortar to the ground.
You've gotta take it on the ground or
yeah you gotta be on a non-bouncy surface.
This bamboo table chair is way too bouncy.
Alright, let's get pounding.
You're gonna have to pound this up
for probably about an hour,
maybe 45 minutes if you're really good.
But you will definitely get a workout
and break a sweat when you're pounding this.
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Okay now we can go ahead and toss in
the rest of those dry chilies.
There's a little bit of spice left too.
Alright.
And then just keep on pounding.
(upbeat music)
I have been pounding for about 30 minutes.
We've got a really nice paste,
look at the consistency and color of that.
And I got the okay from my mother-in-law
to make the last step in this curry paste recipe.
And that is to add the shrimp paste.
Oh, that's sticky shrimp paste.
Alright, there we go and then you can just sort of mash
and push the shrimp paste to distribute it
all throughout that curry paste.
Oh, it's like sticky like mud.
And we are done.
You can grab a spoon
and just look at this beautiful curry paste.
There are few things in this world
that make you feel as accomplished
and as successful as finishing pounding a curry paste.
It's right up there with winning a gold medal.
Put this mortar up here
and I'm gonna scoop the curry paste onto a plate.
Oh, that's just a mound of sticky herbs and spices.
We're not gonna use all that curry paste,
it's a little too much.
So she's gonna use about a half of it.
She says it will be really really spicy if we use it all.
So first put that into a pot.
And then add water.
And as you add that water,
just sort of mix it.
Mix it into that curry paste.
Make sure that curry paste dissolves into the water.
Oh that aroma is just ridiculous.
Now we're gonna move over to the street food cart
to the street food recipe cart.
And that's just the curry paste with water
and then put that on the stove to boil.
Like many Thai dishes, we've already done all the work
of pounding the curry paste.
So really it's a matter of bringing that to a boil.
Bringing the curry paste and water to a boil,
then we're gonna add the pork ribs
and cook that down for a while.
And then that's really all there is to this recipe.
Maya is gonna get started chopping up these ribs.
And you just wanna cut them into bite sized pieces.
And again you could really use whatever meat you like.
She also makes it with chicken sometimes,
which is also really, really good.
We're gonna be using some kaffir lime leaves,
about 10 leaves or so.
It doesn't really matter, just add a nice little handful
of kaffir lime leaves
and you can immediately smell that citrusy aroma.
These are gonna go into the curry
to provide a nice fragrance
and also to take away the meaty aroma
of the pork.
Oh that dry chili foam.
Oh I wish you could smell that,
it is unbelievable.
When the curry paste and water start to boil
then you can add in all of the pork.
Maya says that it needs to boil now for one hour.
So we've got one hour to spare
of smelling this delicious aroma
and after that, you're gonna have
just an amazing dried chili Thai curry.
Forgot one thing, she's grabbing for right now
is the kaffir lime leaves.
And you just sprinkle those in.
That's just gonna give it an extra wonderful fragrance
and you can kinda just mix those in.
Oh, look at that color.
You can see a little bit of yellowness from the turmeric.
You can see that redness from all those dried chilies.
There's some browns,
oh that's just a wonderful dark red orange color.
(speaking in foreign language)
At this stage, you're just gonna boil
for about 45 minutes to one hour
and it's mostly just to make that pork really nice and soft
and Maya said that you just gotta keep taste testing.
Some people add
(speaks in foreign language)
She says it's really spicy.
But some people add, she said, a little bit of sugar
to balance the taste.
If you want it a little bit sweeter,
you can add a spoon or so of sugar
and then also we've already added the salt
from the curry paste as well as the shrimp paste
which contains salt.
So it should be pretty salty, but
oh she taste tested, and she's adding a little more salt.
You can taste test,
and if you need to add a little more salt, you can.
(speaks in foreign language)
As this boils,
it's gonna go from a liquidy, watery consistency
to being a nice, thick, rich
full of dry spice and chilies curry.
(simmering)
At this stage, if it hasn't cooked for long enough,
and if the water is starting to dry out,
you can add a little more water
so that it can boil longer
and so that the meat will get more tender.
Oh, that steam.
Oh, and you can see how it's starting to reduce
to a really think, rich curry.
It is coming along very nicely now.
It's starting to get drier.
You can see that curry paste thickening
around the pork ribs.
You can see all those little bits of dry chili.
And it is just smelling insane.
And so she just is testing, press testing
the softness of the meat
and as soon as that meat is nice
and fall-off-the-bone tender,
we're gonna get ready to eat.
Just got the okay from Maya that the curry is ready.
She said to turn off the gas.
As soon as you turn off the fire
and stop the boiling,
it looks like it's like melted lava down there in that curry
oh, that looks amazing.
You wanna just keep on boiling your curry
until the meat it soft.
That took about an hour of boiling.
And then we added a little bit of water
so that it wouldn't get too dry.
But you do want a very curry thick, rich consistency.
So balance that out, boil out the water
and then you can turn off the gas
and you just have one of the most beautiful red, fiery,
dried chili looking curry
that you'll ever come across.
You just have to admire.
Okay, it's a little bit oily from all that pork.
But I think there's some dried chili oil in there too,
but look at that gravy curry sauce.
It's so thick, it's almost like peanut butter.
I think that is about as much flavor as possible
condensed into a thick liquid.
I'm gonna take a few pieces of these riblets,
stick it onto my rice.
Oh, look at that.
Okay and add a little bit more of that curry sauce.
I will try to just slide that meat off the bone.
Oh, it's so tender, look.
The bone just slides right out.
Okay, so now I have theoretically,
what is a boneless piece of rib
just mixed with all of that curry goodness.
Oh, that's unbelievable.
Oh, that is massive flavor.
The meat is so incredibly tender.
And then the flavor of that curry,
you can taste the hint of the cumin and coriander seed
and then it really just has a,
yeah that dry roasted chili flavor.
That will just annihilate your taste buds.
Oh, this is a recipe that my mother-in-law
really loves to make
and it will literally just blow your mind
with how flavorful it is.
I'm gonna write all of the ingredients
and all of the directions for this entire Thai recipe
over on eatingthaifood.com,
I'll leave the link in the description box.
So you can check out all of the exact ingredients
and then all of the directions and steps as well.
If you love massive flavor, this is a dish you wanna try.
Thank you all very much for watching this video.
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Oh I still have my spoon,
just in case I need to take one more bite.
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Thank you again for watching
and I will see you on the next video.
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