Homemade green curry paste with fresh herbs, lemongrass, and chilies. It’s easy and perfect for all your green curry-ing needs.
Some girls get excited over new shoes; some girls get their kicks from sauce-ing.
This green curry paste took months to come to fruition. Let me clarify: the paste took seconds to make but was months in the making. Because I procrastinated making it. For months.
When I was initially researching how to make green curry paste, I became discouraged by the ingredient list because I knew some items would be difficult to find. So I did what any motivated, all-star, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns food blogger would do. I backburnered the project.
But then I saw a green curry dish on pinterest that made me go “mmmmhmmmmm” (you’ll see the recipe tomorrow), which caused me to buck up and frontburner the green curry paste. My mission: make green curry paste without driving 45 minutes to a natural food store or ethnic food store. My goal: create a straight-forward recipe anyone can make using regular ol’ ingredients. Sure, the recipe won’t be as authentic as the real deal, but it’ll do the trick.
The Roasted Root. Making authentic things inauthentic. Just kidding. This is the real deal. Kind of.
Green curry paste is used in Thai cooking and includes fresh basil, cilantro, and coriander, as well as green Thai chilies, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, kaffir lime zest, fish sauce, shrimp paste, cumin, and coconut milk. Most of these ingredients are easy to come by in my grocery store, but I got stuck on the Thai chilies, shrimp paste, and kaffir lime. I replaced the Thai chilies with jalapeños (you can also use serranos), and use a regular lime in place of the kaffir lime (which by the way, has anyone ever encountered a real kaffir lime in real life? I’m somewhat convinced they’re farcical).
I opted to leave out the shrimp paste and replaced fish sauce with liquid aminos (similar to soy sauce) in order to keep the sauce vegetarian. Thankfully, we do get lemongrass at my store, but for those of you who don’t, you can replace it with lemongrass paste. You’re supposed to toast cumin and corriander seeds for this paste and then grind them, but that just seemed like a lot of work. So I replaced the seeds with the ground versions.
Normally, you would crush all of the ingredients together in a mortar and pestle, but I don’t have one, so I put everything in a blender and chopped it up. I then added coconut milk until it became paste-y.
Typically when I post a sauce recipe, I tell you that I ate it off a spoon or sucked it out of a straw. Because I am, in a word, obsessed with sauces. But such is not the case here. Not that I’m not obsessed with the curry paste, just that mine turned out too spicy to eat off of a spoon. Because I added serranos. But it hurt so good. This may not be a spoon-to-mouth paste, but when it’s mixed into a green curry recipe, it’s wonderful!
Jimmy Choos? They’ve got nothing on green curry paste.
Easy Green Curry Paste
Ingredients
- ½ cup fresh basil chopped
- ½ cup fresh cilantro chopped
- 1 stalk lemongrass thinly sliced (or 3 tbl. Lemongrass paste)
- 2 jalapeños seeded and chopped
- 1 medium shallot chopped
- 5 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh ginger grated
- ½ teaspoon ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 tablespoon coconut aminos * or low-sodium soy sauce
- Zest of 1 lime
- 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
- 4 tablespoons to 6 full-fat canned coconut milk
Instructions
- Add all ingredients except for the coconut milk to a blender or food processor. Pulse until everything is finely chopped.
- Add the coconut milk a couple of tablespoons at a time and continue blending until a paste is achieved.
- Alternatively, you can use a mortar and pestle to grind everything together into a paste
Julia, I need to be honest I’ve never heard about Green curry paste before, but it looks so delicious. I love all the ingredients, specially cilantro 😉
I happen to have a Kaffir lime tree! The leaves are usually used in Thai cooking rather than the fruit. Your Green Curry Recipe does sound easy and pretty yummy. As a fellow Thai foodie I’m going to make your day. You can find Kaffir limes, Thai chillies,
a plethora (neat word) of spices and all of the equipment you will ever need to cook Thai food including mortar & pestels at ThaiFoodimport.com. All at extremely reasonable prices. This company is run by a wonderful couple, she’s Thai, he’s not, and is worth checking out. I think you will love it!
Oops! In all of my excitement to share my favorite online Thai Super Market, I gave you the wrong online address!
The CORRECT one is ImportFood.com
I do hope that you check it out, they even ship fresh produce to your door for extremely reasonable rates. Have fun!
OMG! Definitely going to try this! I know EXACTLY what you mean. I totally put a homemade green curry paste on the backburner…because I was terrified and finding the right ingredients seemed a bit overwhelming. I love THai Kitchen’s paste but its like $6 for a tiny jar and I’ll use up practically the entire thing in one dish! This is amazing. I’m curious how long it will last in the fridge…you’re awesome!!
Great tutorial! I love making curries, will have to try this homemade base sometime soon. 🙂
This is fantastic! I live in a smaller town and can’t find ANYTHING. I haven’t even seen green curry paste in stores, actually. So cool! Will try soon.
I loooooooove green curry!!! I am really looking forward to trying this curry paste. I’m the same way. I’ve been procrastinating making a homemade curry paste for months. I’m glad you finally got around to making one and posting it, so now I can keep being lazy. LOL
Oh I am all over this! Homemade is always the way to go!!
How are you so brilliant! I always buy this stuff from this sketchy little Asian Grocer that I always wonder if I will come out alive from….
You may have just saved my life! PINNED
It’s so hard for me to find good store-bought curry paste in my town, so this is not only delicious-looking, it’s practical! I can’t wait to try it 🙂
Holla at those jalapenos… This looks delicious.
Ha! I’m the exact same way, sometimes I come up with recipes in my head and then figure they will be way too hard, so I forget about them. So glad you came back to this one though! I don’t think I’ve ever eaten green curry paste before, but I love all the ingredients and I am definitely a girl who loves sauce-ing 🙂
I have been the exact same way about homemade curry sauce! Procrastination central. I think you’ve inspired me to get off my butt and JUST DO IT.
YES! It’s lots of fun! If for no other reason, than to learn what all goes in the magical, mythical curry paste 🙂
Been making my own curry pastes since I discovered Nancie McDermott’s book, The Curry Book. This fresh green paste is my favorite, using the same chiles as you do, but I’ve never thought of adding the coconut cream, usually because I’m just going to heat this up and add coconut milk and a whole lot of veggies. I’m going to try it next week and then a batch of your green curry sweet potato noodles! My no carb hubbie will love those!
You should avoid Thai Kitchen brand like the plague. So many fake things in their ingredients, including artificial color. Also second the statement about adding Kaffir Lime Leaves. If you dont have Kaffir Lime Leaves you really arent eating/cooking curry.
Thanks for the recipe. I’ll give it a try next week. I recently went on a trip to SE Asia including Thailand and I fell in love with green curry.
I have a lovely Kaffir lime tree right outside my window! Now I know what to do with the limes…
So excited to try this! I found a recipe for a vegetarian chickpea curry that uses green curry paste. I’d rather make it myself than buy it so I can control the ingredients. I also don’t want to drive all over creation to find a handful of ingredients. I’ll be making this for a vegetarian friend soon but can’t wait to try it too. Thankk you for this easy looking recipe.
OH MY GORSH I made this using Thai basil from my garden, and some jalapenos from garden too and the other stuff from a basic grocery store……then found a good recipe for eggplant and green bean curry. I added some red bells too. IT WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!! It tasted just like a small take out place near me in Virginia that got written up in the New Yorker. My boyfriend and I ate three bowls each. The recipe did call for some additional lime juice, and I added a little extra lemon grass when I made the final curry as my paste didn’t have enough. I gave my dog the empty bowl to lick and he GRUNTED licking the bowl!! He never says boo about anything!!!! Man that stuff was good……I will never see the need to try a version that is more effort than this, a big success.
I was delighted to try the recipe and the green Thai curry came out very tasty. I also found items like galangal, kaffir lime, Thai chilies etc. was difficult. I used the exactly the ingredients mentioned in recipe. Happy to get many alternatives for the original ingredients which are cheaper as well. Thanks a lot for sharing the recipe.