Tags
Asian cuisine, chicken, cooking for 1, cooking for 2, cooking for 4, Easy recipes, How to, Lunch ideas, Meal ideas, quick, soup, stovetop cooking, Thai cuisine
A few years ago I went to Phuket, Thailand on holiday with the family. I love Asian food and especially love the flavours and combinations of Thai cuisine. It is all so fresh and simple and they use the most incredible strong flavoured ingredients to create delicious and easy to recreate dishes.
I had the privilege of taking a private cooking lesson with one of the local beach bar owners. It was arranged in conversation when I expressed how much I loved the food and that I’d love to learn how to cook it! The owner of this beach bar offered me a 5 course cooking lesson, learning some of the most popular Thai dishes and I was so excited! The experience of learning how to cook a dish from someone who had been cooking it their whole lives and the recipe was passed down from generation to generation is something I will feel eternally grateful for.
This soup is so delicious. Also known as Hot and Sour soup, it is a genius blend of sour limes, hot chillies, and a few other essential ingredients. I had made a chicken stock from a leftover Sunday roast and I recommend that you give that a try, the flavour is far superior to stock cube stock. It also has the benefit of being virtually fat free, as you don’t use any oil to cook it, and it includes vegetables and chicken with are both healthy and delicious.
I can imagine that the prep work involved in a lot of Asian dishes can be off-putting, but once you get into the habit of preparing all your ingredients in advance, the actual cooking time will be stress free and quick. Most of these ingredients are available at your local store, but if not I will provide some alternatives.
The central ingredient is of course the stock, and I was very excited to be using my lovely stock that I nurtured for hours for this soup, what a difference it made! After preparing all the ingredients it is as simple as heating the stock to a simmer, adding the flavourings and allowing to simmer gently to infuse all their deliciousness.
After about five minutes, you add the chicken and vegetables and simmer gently until the chicken is lightly poached and the vegetables have softened a little.
The soup will take a sum total of 20 minutes to make so there is no excuse! Get your ingredients ready and make this delicious, warming, fragrant soup today!
- 675 mls light chicken stock, preferable home made, or at least the best possible you can buy
- 1 tsp lemon grass puree (from a tube is fine)
- 1 tsp ginger puree (from a tube)
- 2 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced (the dried ones are fine)
- 3 tbsp Thai fish sauce
- 4 tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1 large red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced (The big chillies aren’t too hot and wont burn anyone’s head off, there is heat but it’s subtle!)
- 2 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks
- 6 mushrooms, finely sliced. Shiitake preferably, but button mushrooms will do
- 16 mange tout, sliced into strips on the diagonal
- 6 spring onions, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp fresh chopped coriander to serve
- Firstly, prepare all of your ingredients into groups to make the cooking process quicker. In one small bowl, add the lemon grass, ginger and lime leaves.
- In another small bowl, add the fish sauce, lime juice and chopped chilli.
- In another bowl, prepare your chopped vegetables: mushrooms, mange tout and spring onions. Have your chopped chicken ready to add as well.
- In a large pot, bring the chicken stock to the boil. Add the lemon grass, ginger and lime leaves and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the fish sauce, lime juice and chilli.
- Add the chicken and vegetables and simmer for another 5 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked.
- Spoon into soup bowls and scatter with the chopped coriander on top. Enjoy!
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