RSS
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Google+
Spotlight
Tom Kha Gai Recipe (Thai Coconut Chicken Soup)
August 2nd, 2009Recipes, 30-Minute Recipes, Recipes, Recipes, Thai Recipes68 Comments
Tom Kha Gai–everyone’s favorite Thai coconut chicken soup–is one of the Thai recipes that I have always always wanted to make but never did. Why? Because there are plenty of good Thai restaurants in the US that serve pretty authentic Thai food.
So, it’s no surprise that this is my virgin Tom Kha Gai–my first attempt at home. It was easier than I thought, and the Tom Kha Gai turned out really good and tasted exactly like what it should be: milky, aromatic, sour, salty, and super appetizing.
The main ingredient of Tom Kha Gai is galangal, or “Tom Kha” in Thai. “Gai” means Chicken. The more I cook Thai food, it dawns to me that Thai recipes are pretty much variations of the following Thai ingredients:
1) Fish sauce (nam pla)
2) Coconut milk
3) Kaffir lime leaf
4) Galangal
5) Lemongrass
6) Palm sugar
7) Bird’s eye chilies
8) Nam prik phao (roasted chili paste)
9) Cilantro (coriander)
10) Lime
If you have the ingredients above, you can pretty much whip up any good Thai recipes as you wish. Below is my Tom Kha Gai recipe, which I adapted from my favorite Thai cookbook: Thai Cooking Made Easy.
(Click Page 2 for the Tom Kha Gai Recipe)
Pages: 1 2
Click Below for More Easy and Delicious Recipes:
SHARE THE RECIPE & PHOTOS:
Hey!
The soup looks really really yummy! I live in the midwest where unfortunately good Thai/Asian food is so hard to come by…so I’ll try this recipe next week. Cannot wait!
Keep the good food recipes coming and congrats on your new site too!
SLT – thanks for your sweet note. Good luck with the recipe and let me know how it goes.
That is one wonderful soup! Refined tasting and so fragrant!
Cheers,
Rosa
Rosa – agreed!
I went to a Thai restaurant yesterday and was somewhat disappointed with the food- it was barely Thai food at all! But I loved going through the menu, especially seeing all the different soups. And here is a beautiful recipe. What a pleasant coincidence :)
Mia – Oh no, I never try Thai food in India, but not surprised it’s not authentic. I tried Chinese food in India, too, but it’s different. Hehe.
I am Thai and this looks very authentic and yummy!!! Happy cooking =)
Candle – thanks for the comment. Phew, a real Thai and said that it’s very authentic and yummy! :)
This is my favorite Thai soup too :) Yes, even more than tom yum!
Joey – yeah, Tom Yum is great, but this has a certain appeal that Tom Yum doesn’t have!!
congrats on your first try at home! fabulous! i’ve never made it but would enjoy it! i loooove coconut soup and just don’t eat Thai out enough!
Yes, coconut milk is addictive, but it’s actually not that healthy, but who cares, haha.
I’ve never made this at home, although it too is my favorite Thai soup! The place where I usually order it throws little halves of cherry tomatoes in there…only about 2 tomatoes total. Kinda wondering if that’s authentic, but they’re an enjoyable addition, a nice little surprise bite in your soup! I will have to try this at home. Yum.
Cherry tomatoes, sounds good, I am sure they look cute and colorful in Tom Kha Gai.
I love Thai food too and i cried for days when my kaffir lime tree died. :(
I wanna try to make this recipe for my big bossman to see if it gets me a raise. If it does, the extra money will be saved for your 24 courses meal. :) Looks fabulous as always.
Zen – oh no, your kaffie lime tree died? I would love to have one, too, and also kalamansi tree, curry leaves tree, etc. Good luck getting the raise. :)
ahh one of my faves!
Nags – definitely!
My favorite! i cook it all the time and never tire of it!
Christelle – I will have to make Tom Kha Gai a lot more now since it’s easy!
Everything here is good…I also loved the pictures…I like this kind of mix…coconut milk and chicken. It’s great.
Paula
Paula – thanks for the comment, yes, what’s not to love about Tom Kha Gai?
Oh yum. Everytime I make this, I face a conundrum. If I make it with thigh meat, the perfect whiteness of the dish is sullied. If I make it with chicken breast, it tends to get kind of mealy and throw off tiny little white bits into the soup that make it look like the coconut milk curdled. Do you know what I mean? How did you avoid that, yours looks perfect!
Hey Ivy – I know what you mean but I didn’t see any tiny little white bits in the soup from the chicken breast. I think you have to make sure the soup is boiling when you add the chicken breast? I personally don’t like thigh meat.
Looks amazing. I love that you added a red chile in the center of the phototograph.
I love using kaffir lime leaves. They are so fragrant. Check my veggie version at http://www.phamfatale.com/id_40/title_Vegetarian-Tom-Yum-Thai-Soup/
That soup is sure a thing of beauty. It is one of my kid’s favorite soups. I haven’t made it in ages. I doubt that mine is more authentic than yours, for sure no straw mushrooms in mine (maybe a few shiitakes,) and I usually use fish. Never tried it with chicken. Beautiful Photos!
This looks delicious, Bee.
This is my favorite soup for winter!! Is the perfect blend of sweet with that little kick in the end!!
Pingback:FoodieView Blog » Peppers, Hot and Sweet
I have made this soup 3 times and have impressed my friends 3 times. I substitute chicken with prawns sometimes. For more I added 1 or 2 more chillies. Great and easy recipe!
Jules – glad my Tom Kha Gai recipe works for you. Prawns are great idea. :)
made this today. the Kaffir lime leaves were the most difficult to find, had to go to 3 asian markets to find them. i just tasted the soup as it is simmering…………OMG! i can see why this is my wife’s favorite at “Indocine” restaurant. We will make this again, and again. Thanks for sharing the awesome recipe!
Thanks for trying this tom kha gai recipe. The kaffir lime leaf is the soul of the dish, without them, it’s just not the same. Great that you found it. :)
I love ordering this soup at Thai restaurants. I have never cooked any kind of Thai food before though. Honestly I have no idea what half of these ingredients are. You can find/buy them in a normal grocery store or do you have to get them at a specialty food store? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!!
You can get them in an Asian store, some of the common ingredients can be found at the ethnic section of your typical big chain grocery stores.
Have to agree: here in Belgium, the kaffir limes are by far the hardest to find as well. Luckily, I found them today in a fresh Tom Yum package, which also contained some chillies and galangal, so that was pretty handy. Was my first time using a lot of the ingredients, including the straw mushrooms (what strange things they are :)), but it worked out really well, it isn’t hard to make at all. I do wonder if I’m just a weakling, or if it’s normal that even with just 2 chillies in there, I still think this soup is really really hot. It’s delicious though, will definitely make it again to build up my tolerance for hot food :)
I like cooking i want lean more
I love this soup We had it in thailand and never knew how to make it thanx ….
I always, always order this soup when I go to a Thai restaurant. Then it dawned on me: Why not make this at home? Can’t wait to try this. Thanks so much for sharing!
so yum! i wan la!
I decided to try and learn to cook at home and this was the first dish I ever cooked. Its delicious! Thanks a lot! :)
This is one of my favorite Thai dishes, as like you said it’s not only tasty it’s easy to make :)
Lovely photos by the way.
Love this soup. Just googled it and found your post! Thanks!
Chicken Soup is one of my favorite dishes of all time. it is very tasty and the ingredients are very affordable. thanks for sharing
HI
Gong Xi Fatt Chai!!!!
I have been following your blog for the past 1 1/2 yr. Although they are many blogs out there but somehow yours is the one that I will go check first for inspiration. Ha ha ha…Your Thai coconut prawn N this soup are my inspiration to cook up something new for my brother in law who just got back from USA.
Keep up the good work… Pretty mummy!
20 canned straw mushroom???
Yes, why not? I love them. You can use half if you like as it doesn’t really affect the flavor.
20 pieces of canned straw mushrooms, that’s what I think the recipe calls for. :)
I have been following your website for about a year now, since my wife and I went to Malaysia on business. I have made many of the dishes, but hadn’t branched out to this one yet. We made this tonight, and it is amazing. I didn’t quite put the firepower of 8 birds eye chiles in, but other than that followed the recipe exactly. This is better than the Thai restaurant version that we love. Thanks so much!
Thank you I am so happy that you love my recipe and that it tastes better than the restaurant. :)
Pingback:Thai Style Soup with Shrimp « for the love of yum
Pingback:Tom Kha Gai « RÓKafé
I will make this tonight..though I don’t have straw mushrooms.. can I use normal mushrooms instead?
Yes, you can.
oh I love it!!! simply delicious! Thank you for sharing this with us!
I now live near Washington DC and used to live in Hawaii where they have authentic Thai cuisine.
All the recipes I see on the internet are runny.
The Thai soup that I love best is thicker and is wonderful served over sticky rice. It has almost a stew like sauce to it.
What do you recommend that I use to thicken it?
Thank you,
Tutu
Title: Very Easy To Make
My kind of cooking is usually throwing in a frozen pizza. However, I love Thai food so much and wanted to save money on going to a restaurant all the time that I was inspired to try this recipe. I have to say, even being an EXTREMELY amateur cook, it was VERY EASY to make.
The hardest part was finding the ingredients (more specifically the Kaffir Lime Leaves). I live in Phoenix, AZ and went to two Asian food restaurants (Asianas & Lee Lee’s) but I could not find lime leaves. At Lee Lee’s two store employees gave me some dried leaves they said were lime leaves called Wood Skin. Anyone ever heard of them? They seemed to work fine.
The coconut milk visually curdled a little bit (I think because I simmered it too long waiting for my husband to get home), but it didn’t change the taste. My husband said that the taste of the broth was perfect =) What a compliment. Thank you for this wonderful recipe!
I’m in Phoenix, too, and shop at Asiana all the time. I’ve only been to Lee Lee a few times.
I know for a fact that both stores carry kaffir lime leaves. You’ll find them in the produce section, usually wrapped in a white styrofoam sleeve with cellophane wrap. This is one ingredient where fresh definitely trumps dried…
I had been craving this soup for ages and it did not fail me. Wonderful, easy receipe.
Tom kha gai has been my favourite soup since the first time I ordered it in a Thai restaurant and I can’t even consider any other starter now. Seeing as I’d like to have it much more often than I eat out, I googled recipes and this came up at the top of the list. I used the recipe today and it turned out perfectly! As another person said, the hardest part by far was finding the ingredients. (I live in Dublin and had to go to one Asian shop for the kaffir lime leaves and another for the galangal.)
Thank you so much. :-)
Thanks Siobhan.
Pingback:A Visit to Kinaree – Bangkok | How to Live Compassionately
Pingback:Soup Swap « slowfoodnu
In Thailand, do they make this soup With or Without chicken stock/broth? Other tom kha gai recipes I have tried always called for some stock in it. Just wondering. Looks good though! Ron
How many does this recipe serve?
2-3.
I had a wonderful dish that was chicken breast cooked in a heavy coconut sauce. not a soup do you know what it might have been. the place went out of business before i could go back and try to taste what was in it. It was wonderful.
I love Tum Ka Ga Soup, its the best ever, i dont cook at all, but some 12 years ago i picked up a recipe book from Bangkok and tried the soup at home while my wife was traveling,, if you get the ingredient then its pretty easy. Soup is a hit with any one at all, there is a special rice that I make with the soup stolen from a Bohra Dish my mother used to make. Together the two are a tremendous meal. I can send you the recipe for the rice if you want. Zain Jeewanjee