I’m sitting here with a blank screen trying to figure out if I can even accurately describe to you how good this Thai Red Curry Vegetable Soup is. Maybe I should tell you that I wanted to skip the bowl and just eat it straight out of the pot with the huge ladle as my spoon? Maybe I should admit that I almost wanted to tell my boyfriend that I didn’t cook anything today so I could hide the soup and eat it all myself (no, not really, that’s mean).
The point is, this Thai Curry Vegetable Soup is good. So, so, so good. That paired with its simplicity and ease of preparation means there’s a good chance I’ll want to make this about once per week. I probably shouldn’t be eating that much coconut milk, but I’m sure I’ll find some way to rationalize it.
What Is Thai Red Curry Paste?
Thai red curry paste is a mix of red peppers, chiles, ginger, garlic, and other spices. Not to be confused with Indian curry powder, which is a mix of different spices and is usually sold as a powder, rather than a paste. Thai red curry paste can be used in soups, stir fries, sauces, and more.
Is Thai Red Curry Hot?
The spiciness of Thai red curry soup depends on the brand of Thai red curry paste used. I used Thai Kitchen brand, which is common in U.S. grocery stores, and it is not very spicy. Green Thai curry paste, on the other hand, is quite a bit spicier.
Customize the Vegetables
I happened to go to an Asian market yesterday where I picked up the ingredients for this soup (at really amazing prices, I might add), but if you can’t get the same vegetables as me, you can still make this Thai Curry Vegetable Soup! The beauty of this Thai Curry Vegetable Soup is that you can use just about any vegetable you like, although I try to at least have some sort of leafy green. Other vegetables that would be great choices include: spinach, kale, collard greens, cabbage, mushrooms, bean sprouts, snow peas, carrots, or red bell peppers.
Make it Vegetarian
I made a vegetarian version (minus the fish sauce, anyway) today, but you could easily add meat to this soup. Toss in some shredded rotisserie chicken, or brown some chicken pieces in the beginning with the Thai curry paste. If you prefer shrimp, I suggest adding it at the end and simmering just a few minutes, or until the shrimp turn pink.
Noodle Options
And what about the noodles? That’s customizable, too! You can skip the noodles all together if you want, or use a brick of cheap-o ramen if that’s what you have. It’s still going to taste amazing.
Easy, flavorful, and customizable–This Thai Curry Vegetable Soup is EXACTLY Budget Bytes style.
Thai Red Curry Vegetable Soup
Servings 4 (about 2 cups each)Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp neutral cooking oil* ($0.04)
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.16)
- 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger ($0.05)
- 2 Tbsp Thai red curry paste ($0.62)
- 1 small sweet potato (about 1 lb.) ($1.61)
- 1 bunch baby bok choy ($0.55)
- 4 cups vegetable or chicken broth ($0.52)
- 1 13oz. can coconut milk ($1.29)
- 1/2 Tbsp fish sauce ($0.07)
- 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.02)
- 3.5 oz. rice vermicelli noodles ($0.39)
GARNISHES (optional)
- 1/2 red onion ($0.29)
- 1 lime ($0.17)
- 1 handful fresh cilantro ($0.17)
- Sriracha to taste ($0.15)
Instructions
- Prepare the vegetables for the soup and garnishes first, so they’re ready to go when needed. Mince the garlic and grate the ginger using a small-holed cheese grater. Peel and dice the sweet potato into one-inch cubes. Wash the bok choy well, then chop into one-inch strips, separating the fibrous stalks from the delicate green ends. Thinly slice the red onion and roughly chop the cilantro.
- Add the cooking oil to a large soup pot along with the minced garlic, grated ginger, and Thai red curry paste. Sauté the garlic, ginger, and curry paste over medium heat for 1-2 minutes.
- Add the diced sweet potato and chopped bok choy stalks to the pot (save the leafy green ends for later) along with the chicken or vegetable broth. Bring the pot to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat to low and let simmer for 5-7 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
- While the soup is simmering, bring a small pot of water to a boil for the vermicelli. Once boiling, add the vermicelli and boil for 2-3 minutes, or just until tender. Drain the rice noodles in a colander and set aside.
- Once the sweet potatoes are tender, add the coconut milk, fish sauce, and brown sugar to the soup. Stir, taste, and adjust the fish sauce or brown sugar if needed. Finally, add the bok choy greens and let them wilt in the hot soup.
- To serve, divide the rice vermicelli among four bowls. Ladle the soup and vegetables over the noodles, then top with red onion, cilantro, a wedge or two of lime, and a drizzle of sriracha.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Notes
Nutrition
Video
How gorgeous are those colors??
How to Make Thai Curry Soup – Step by Step Photos
Start by preparing your vegetables, so they’re ready to use when you need them. I just happened to go to an Asian market the day before, so I picked up this Japanese yam, baby bok choy, limes, cilantro, and a red onion. Read through the intro if you need ideas for alternate vegetables.
Peel and dice the yam (or sweet potato, either will work), thinly slice the red onion, cut the limes into wedges, and cut the bok choy into strips. Try to keep the stalk end and the leafy green ends separate, as you’ll add them to the Thai Curry Vegetable Soup at different times.
You’ll also want to mince two cloves of garlic and grate about 1 Tbsp fresh ginger. It’s important to note that Thai red curry paste is VERY different from the curry powder that is used in Indian cuisine. This one is basically a mix of red chiles, garlic, galangal (similar to ginger), lemongrass, and a few other spices. If you want to make this soup EXTRA easy, skip the garlic and ginger, and just add more of the Thai red curry paste. ;)
Add a couple of tablespoons of any neutral cooking oil (like canola, vegetable, peanut, sunflower, grapeseed), the minced garlic, grated ginger, and 2 Tbsp of the Thai red curry paste to a large pot. Sauté the garlic, ginger, and curry paste over medium heat for 1-2 minutes.
Next add the hard vegetables, in this case, the yam (or sweet potato) and stalks of the bok choy, so they can simmer in the soup and soften.
Add four cups of vegetable or chicken broth, place a lid on top, turn the heat up to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5-7 minutes, or until the sweet potato is soft.
While the soup is simmering, I cooked the rice vermicelli separately (this package is 3.5oz). The reason I cooked the noodles separately is that they cook super fast and I didn’t want them to overcook in the soup. I might, at some point in the future, add them to the soup at the end and let them soften that way, but today I wanted to be extra sure, so I just cooked them separately. They only take about 2-3 minutes to soften in boiling water, then drain the noodles in a colander and set aside.
Back to the soup pot. Once the sweet potato cubes are soft, add a 13oz. can of coconut milk, which transforms the soup into this creamy goodness.
Also, add 1/2 Tbsp fish sauce and 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar. Now, if you’ve never used fish sauce let me just tell you that it is very potent and doesn’t smell good, but because it’s used in such small quantities, that doesn’t really transfer to the dish you’re adding it to. It just adds a subtle umami flavor and a bit of saltiness. If you can’t get fish sauce or want this dish to be vegetarian, you can leave it out. It still tastes good, but IMHO will be missing that je ne sais quoi or authentic flavor that fish sauce gives. Also, if you skip the fish sauce, you can probably also skip the brown sugar.
After adding the fish sauce and brown sugar, give the broth a taste and adjust the flavors if needed. Finally, add the leafy green ends of the bok choy and let them wilt in the hot soup (the pot should still be over low heat).
To serve the Thai Curry Vegetable Soup, place some of the rice vermicelli in the bottom of a bowl…
Ladle the soup and vegetables over the noodles…
Then add your garnishes: thinly sliced red onion, lime wedges, chopped cilantro, and a drizzle of sriracha.
And then dig in.
And try not to die of happiness from the tastiest Thai Vegetable Soup ever.
Hey beautiful. ;) ;) ;)
Mine turned out really plain :(
Mine as well 😕
Same here
i doubled the curry paste (but also added a lil more of all ingredients). I saw a comment that said to make sure you sautee the paste for long enough… I sautee’d mine for way longer than 1-2 minutes. I’ve cooked with curry paste before and always thought the flavor of the final product was bland, so this is the first time I sautee’d the paste for so long… and the result was delicious. so maybe try that? i also use homemade chicken stock so that could contribute to the deliciousness as well. but if you don’t make your own, definitely go with buillon cubes rather than boxed broth from a store. That stuff is pretty much equivelent to salty water
This looks delicious! Do you think it could be made in an Instant Pot?
How long would you say this could last in the fridge before you’d throw it out? Is it a good meal prep recipe?
I pretty much eat all my recipes as “meal prep” and eat the leftovers until they’re gone. :D This one was good for me for about 4 days, but as with any recipe, it’s a slow degredation of quality, so it’s often more of a personal call for how long it “lasts.”
LOVED IT!!! Really easy to follow and yummy results! I did end up adding more fish sauce and brown sugar. But wow! Great recipe. I put some rice in mine as well and it soaked up the flavor. That was pretty good
Oh yeah this was SO GOOD! I did add the dry noodles about 5 minutes before serving with the leafy parts of the bok choy and it worked really well. No need to mess up an additional pot.
Yum!!! One of my favorite soups of all time!!!
This is HEAVEN in a bowl! what would I do without your awesome blog, Beth?! I cook your recipes at least twice every week. So happy I found you!
I made this with savoy cabbage because my husband and I do not like bok choy and did not have fish sauce and it was absolutely delicious…wish coconut milk wasn’t so fattening otherwise I would have this everyday
OMG! Excellent soup! Loved it. So delicious and easy to make.
This is one of my favorite Budget Bytes recipes and I make it all the time, so I want to give some tips I’ve learned from my successes (and not so successes).
1) You definitely want to sautee the red curry paste at the beginning. I have two different pots I’ve tried to make this in (about the same size) and my “non-stick” one does not sautee the curry paste nearly as well as my metal-bottom one. This absolutely makes a difference in the end flavor of the soup, and even the consistency. If your red curry paste doesn’t look like the first broth picture (kind of films the surface, but sticks to the sides when you stir), you probably didn’t sautee enough, and the flavor will be a little less impressive (just not as pronounced. In my opinion, you can still save it with the fish sauce and lime at the end.) 2) The type of broth you use will matter. If you’re new to Budget Bytes, you may not know that Better Than Bullion is the go-to for soup/stock base. It is. Not only is it easier to carry home from the grocery store and keep on hand than any other pre-made stock, but I honestly believe it has far better flavor. (My husband once complained when I used boxed broth instead in a recipe, because I had it in the pantry and needed to use it. He had no clue what had changed, just that it wasn’t as good, and he doesn’t complain about my cooking!) 3) It’s been said many times, but you really, really want full-fat coconut milk for this recipe for the body it gives. 4) Fish sauce to taste (I use 3/4-1 Tbsp), and a healthy squeeze of lime at the end really kick this up to another level. If you don’t have a lime on hand, the sqeeze-bottle lime will work. Cilantro is the cherry on top, but it’s really all about the fish sauce and lime.
I went to three grocery stores and could only find green Thai curry paste, so that’s what I ended up using. It still came out wonderfully. I was skeptical about the fish sauce, but I ended up adding just a splash more after the initial tasting. Instead of the veggies listed, I used chicken breasts, mushrooms, and red bell peppers (because I already had these in hand).
All in all, I really, really, really dug this recipe. And I think the beauty of this recipe (as with all of your other ones!) is that you can follow it a t or use it as a creative guide.
So easy and so delicious! Thank you for sharing this!
So delicious!!!! Comfort food!!
I made this the other night after seeing it on your Instagram feed – it was a great way to use a bunch of stuff i already had! Tasted great. I ended up using butternut squash instead of sweet potato due to a mix up with the grocery list but it tasted good and didn’t take much extra time. i love the creamy sweetness from the coconut milk and it was pretty easy to pull together. Yum!
One of our new favorite meals. I made it with chicken thighs and added other veggies. So good! Thanks so much!
I can’t wait to make this for dinner tonight! Do you think it would work to substitute miso paste for the fish sauce?? I already have that on hand and know it also gives an umami flavor. But I don’t wanna majorly screw it up haha!
Hmm, honestly I can’t imagine what miso would taste like in this. Although it does give umami, miso has a different sort of sweetness that fish sauce does not have. I would make it without first, and then perhaps try adding a small amount to just one serving to see how the flavors blend.
Did you try the miso?
I’m allergic to fish so looking for a flavorful replacement…