Tom Kha Gai Recipe
This week I am making my version of a Tom Kha Gai recipe. Tom Kha Gai is Thai coconut chicken soup. The weather is getting cold and I thought I would just make some good old fashioned Jewish penicillin (New York style chicken soup) and then I thought to myself I could do that anytime and lots of people have done it already. This Tom Kha Gai recipe in my opinion is a great version of Thai penicillin. Tom Kha Gai is warming and creamy and is loaded with lovely herbs and spices to make some of the best chicken soup that one has ever had. It's really a pretty simple and yet very delicious chicken. This Tom Kha Gai recipe has all the distinctive Thai flavors that one would expect in a Thai dish. Tom Kha Gai (Gai is chicken) has an ingredient in it called galangal (In Thai Kha) There is one substituition I am using in my Tom Kha Gai recipe and that is using ginger in place of galangal as I could not locate any galangal this week and then I will be using the other ingredients of lemongrass and kaffir limes leaves to infuse the coconut milk and chicken broth/stock that I make as well. A good Tom Kha Gai recipe will have a good balance of salty, sweet, spicy, and sour flavors. Of course when it comes time to make flavor adjustments to your Tom Kha Gai recipe you can manipulate them in any way that you like to suit your needs. This chicken soup is a total winner to warm you up in the winter months. The combination of herbs and spices will also help to fortify you with nutrients to help ward off that cold or flu! I mean isn't that what chicken soup is for anyway? Of course it is! My version a Thai Tom Kha Gai recipe will have some garlic in it and of course the chilies will help fight off that winter cold and give you a vitamin C shot to boot! Tom Kha Gai is a soup that can be served as an appetizer or as a main course depending on how you make it. If you add noodles or even rice to your Tom Kha Gai recipe then it then becomes a main meal and if you exclude those items Tom Kha Gai then becomes an excellent appetizer. Either way Tom Kha Gai is a delicious chicken soup recipe. I'm making my Tom Kha Gai recipe this week as a main meal with the addition of rice noodles.
Tom Kha Gai can be made many ways. When I learned to cook I learned to make chicken soup or stock/broth using whole chickens or whole chickens cut up with the skin on. Then some herbs and spices would be added to the mixture while it was simmering. Jewish penicillin can be made with the addition of chicken innards or even chicken feet! I LOVE chicken feet. I have never had Tom Kha Gai in Thai restaurants that served it with chicken feet although I think that would really give it that soul food aspect of cooking. I won't be using chicke feet in my Tom Kha Gai recipe this week but rest assured chicken feet are on my future menu! A lot of recipes out there call for using boxed organic chicken stock in their Tom Kha Gai recipe and that is fine if you want to speed up the cooking process. Today I will be simmer a cut up chicken for at least 2 to 3 hours which is chicken broth. I will then remove the meat from the carcass and add the bones back to the broth for an hour or so to fortify the flavor of the broth to be something closer to a chicken stock. There will also of course be some herbs and spices added to make the flavor of the broth/stock even better.
It seems popular today when you go to eat Tom Kha Gai in Thai restaurants that you will either have Nam Prig Pad or Pao added to the Tom Kha Gai or it will be available on the side. To my knowledge this is not traditional but, it is popular these days. I will not be offering it up in my recipe but you can use it in yours if you desire. Some of my friends like to add either sesame oil or some form of chili oil to their Tom Kha Gai to. I will not be doing that either. I just LOVE to eat my Tom Kha Gai with rice noodles as a complete meal. In some restaurants the Tom Kha Gai is served in rather small bowls but believe you me I'll make mine a BIG bowl! This is how it's going to be made today. Enjoy the video!
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