Quick Red Thai Coconut Soup with Rice Noodles & Roasted Peanuts

This Red Thai Curry recipe uses simple ingredients and packs in a lot of flavour. Think curry, coconut, lime, ginger, garlic, a bit salty, a bit sweet and a nice warm heat from the curry paste & sambal oelek. For Garnish? Bean sprouts, roasted peanuts, lime & cilantro. I like to have a little dish of soy sauce & sesame oil at the table for drizzling too. I can also see some julienned carrots and thai or regular basil as a garnish on this too!

Lemongrass 
I had been keeping my eye out for fresh lemongrass for ages because I wanted to use it in this recipe. Finally, I just decided to give this paste a try. You see them in tubes in the herb section at grocery stores. I'm just getting acquainted with it, I think I like it fine but will play around more with it. Leave it out if you wish. You can taste at the end and decide to add a bit more lime juice instead. 

Easy Noodle Bowl Variation
I also use this exact same recipe to make a thicker sauce/stir-fry like noodle dish. I just add 1 cup LESS veg stock in the beginning, I don't add in any vegetables. (Last picture at the bottom of this post)

Instead, I sauté veggies (eg: broccoli, bok choy, carrots, mushrooms peppers, tofu) and toss with cooked noodles and some of the sauce. Top with same garnishes as the soup. 

​You Tube Video & Written Recipe Below!

Serves 4 - 6
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Ingredients:

•  1 onion

•  6 cloves of garlic
•  1/4 cup red thai curry paste
•  3 tbsp soy sauce
•  1 inch piece of ginger
•  1 tsp lemongrass paste (optional)
•  4 cups of veg stock
•  1 can full fat coconut milk
•  1 x red bell pepper
•  4 x crimini mushrooms
•  1 tbsp curry powder
•  1 tsp cumin
•  juice 1/2 lime - 1 lime (to taste, start with less add more as you like)
•  1 tbsp brown cane sugar 
• a few handfuls of cooked rice noodles (I had a 485 g package of dried noodles and didn't need to use the whole thing to eat with all of this soup)

Method:

1. Saute onion, garlic and ginger in a bit of coconut or veg oil until softened. Stir in red thai paste, lemongrass paste, curry powder & cumin. 
2.  Now add veg stock & coconut milk, bring to a simmer. 
3. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, & lime juice. Now let your soup just chill on the heat for awhile. You want it to gently simmer & let all those flavours hang out. Go do some laundry, clean something, or watch a Netflix Episode. 
4.  Now, after simmering for about an hour, I usually put this in the fridge over night. I like next day soup. 
5.  Then next day heat, puree with immersion blender, taste, adjust any seasoning you might like. If it is a bit thick, just thin it out with a bit of stock or water. No big deal. 
6.  At this point I toss in my peppers and mushrooms. When those are almost cooked, prepare the amount of rice noodles you want to eat. Just follow package directions (though with noodles I usually shave a bit of time off what package actually says)
7.  To serve, just put a handful of cooked noodles into a bowl, ladle soup over noodles, garnish with roasted peanuts, bean sprouts & lime wedge & cilantro.