Gai pad prik gaeng is a commonly available Thai street food dish that includes chicken (or another meat of choice) stir fried up with Thai red curry paste. It’s almost like a dry curry, all the coating of the curry paste coating the meat in amazing flavor. Give this recipe a try, it’s truly a flavor exciting Thai dish.
Ingredients
- 300 grams , or about 1.5 chicken breasts
- 3 strands of Chinese long beans (or about ⅓ cup of chopped string beans)
- 3 – 5 kaffir lime leaves
- 3 tablespoons Thai red curry paste, or alternatively packaged red curry paste, but it won’t be as good.
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon oil for frying
Instructions
- The first thing you need to do is take your chicken and slice it into small bite sized pieces. I like to cut it quite fine so there’s more surface area for flavor, and so it cooks quicker.
- Cut the Chinese long beans (or green beans) into 1 inch pieces.
- Once your chicken and long beans are cut, go ahead and light your stove on low heat and add in 1 tablespoon of oil. You really need to use about 1 tablespoon of oil, if you use less, the curry paste will burn and stick to the pan.
- No need to wait until your oil is hot, just toss in about 3 tablespoons of red curry paste into the oil and start stir frying it in the oil. Let it sizzle for about 20 – 30 seconds on low heat, and it should really be fragrant (you might even cough from the frying chilies!).
- Next add your chicken, turn up the heat to high, and start stir frying constantly, fully mixing the chicken with the curry sauce.
- Quickly season with 1 teaspoon of fish sauce (give your curry paste a test to see how salty it already is, from the package it might be saltier than the homemade version), and ½ teaspoon sugar.
- Stir fry constantly, and at this point if it’s getting dry, add a couple tablespoons of water.
- Keep stir frying the chicken on high heat for about 2 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked.
- When the chicken is fully cooked, add the sliced long beans, and then break in about 3 – 5 kaffir limes leaves.
- Stir fry for just 30 seconds and then turn off the heat. You want the long beans to still be nice and crisp.
- Dish your gai pad prik gaeng out onto a plate and serve with freshly steamed rice.