Tom Yum Soup recipe with coconut milk

If I were a slot machine, I think I’d be considered “hot” right now, because I keep giving the top hit recipes this month. Kaeng Khiao Wan was just posted earlier this month. Then Pad See Ew just last week. I was supposed to post a recipe for mango sticky rice this week.

However, I had just come home from a trip, bought a box of mangoes and they were not ripe to the point where I could use them yet, so that recipe had to wait. But this week is another Thai food top hit again so don’t worry about sticky rice and mango, you will get the recipe soon enough.

Tom Yum Goong is voted one of the most delicious and most favorite dishes among both foreigners and Thais. It always in the top ten list of not only most delicious but also most famous and most popular foods in the world as well. Tom Yum is one type of soup in Thailand. It consists of soup stock with herbs, lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaf and a choice of meat and vegetables. In this case the choice of meat will be “goong”= shrimp. The soup is normally seasoned with fish sauce, lime juice and chilies. There are also optional add-ons, such as Nam Phrik Pao (chili jam), and sometimes milk or even coconut milk.

Tom Yum is widely eaten all over the country. Some of you who know how to make Tom Kha Soup might ask how the two soups are different. The difference is Tom Kha is a thick soup with a coconut base and heavy on young galangal for the herb, but Tom Yum originally was a clear broth with lemongrass as the lead herb, followed with kaffir lime leaf, and the galangal would be less prominent in this soup. The biggest difference for me is Tom Yam is so hot and spicy and Tom Kha is milder.

When I was a kid growing up in Bangkok, Tom Kha didn’t have Nam Phrik Pao (Thai Chili Jam) in it and also had no chilies floating on top to scare me away. Very different from Tom Yam, in which I can smell the chilies from far away. And once I got a closer look, the bowl of soup was just as intimidating with red color that I thought was chilies, but it was in fact oil from the Nam Phrik Pao (the versatile Thai chili jam), and the real “torpedo”, whole chili pods, crushed lightly to break the skin, floating all over the surface of the bowl.