Thai Curry & Rice

A mild coconut curry built for a thermos. Which curry pastes are safe, why the paste gets fried first, and how to get it to noon still hot.

Makes

2 lunches

Hands on

15 min

Start to finish

30 min

Keeps

3 days in the fridge

• 1 tbspgluten free red or yellow curry paste, mildThis is the ingredient to check. Several brands carry wheat, and some use shrimp paste, so read it once and then buy the same one.
• 1 canfull fat coconut milk, 14ozNot light. The thick cream at the top is a step in the method, and light coconut milk does not have it.
• 2boneless chicken thighs, cut into chunksThighs rather than breast. Breast goes stringy once it has been reheated in a thermos.
• 1lime
• 1 cupricePacked separately, not stirred in.
• salt

1. Open the coconut milk without shaking it and spoon the thick cream off the top into a cold pan.
2. Add the curry paste to that cream and fry it for a minute over medium heat, until it darkens slightly and the kitchen smells strong. This is the step people skip, and skipping it is why a home curry tastes flat.
3. Pour in the rest of the coconut milk and add the chicken. Simmer gently for fifteen minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened a little.
4. Take it off the heat. Squeeze in half the lime, taste, add salt, and add more lime if it needs lifting.
5. Cook the rice separately and let it cool if you are packing it cold.

1. Fill the thermos with boiling water and leave it five minutes while the curry finishes, then tip it out. A cold thermos takes the heat out of the food instead of holding it in, and this one step is the difference between hot at noon and lukewarm.
2. Reheat the curry until it is properly steaming, not just warm, then fill the thermos right to the top. Air is what cools it, so a half full thermos loses heat much faster than a full one.
3. Pack the rice in its own container. Rice sitting in curry for five hours turns to paste.
4. Send a fork, not a spoon. Chunks of chicken and separate rice are a fork job.

• It arrives lukewarm. The thermos was not preheated, or it was not filled to the top, or the curry went in warm rather than steaming.
• It tastes flat. The paste was not fried in the coconut cream first.
• The chicken is stringy. Breast instead of thigh.
• It has separated and looks oily. That is light coconut milk, or it was boiled hard after the lime went in. Stir it and it is fine to eat, it just looks worse.

Curry paste is the only real risk here and it is a genuine one. Thai curry pastes vary a lot between brands, and some contain wheat, while others use a shrimp paste that is fine for gluten but matters if there is a shellfish allergy in the house. Coconut milk, rice, lime and chicken are all naturally gluten free. Find one paste that works and stay with it, because this is not a category where the safe brand is obvious from the front of the jar.