Spicy Thai Meatball Soup

Makes 4 large bowls

1lb minced beef

½ cup rice (jasmine or basmati)

1400 ml chicken stock

2 tbsp Thai red curry

2 tbsp Tom yum paste 

2 tsp palm sugar

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp fish sauce

½ the juice of a lemon or lime  

1 garlic clove

1 shallot

5 celery sticks

3 tomatoes

Coriander

 

This recipe is my own; having cooked Thai food for quite a few years and grasping the main ingredients I decided to experiment.  

One of my frequently cooked soups is Thai chicken noodle soup which is more creamy and coconuty.   Tom yum is also a favourite and I think if you like Tom yum you will like this.  It is more of a tomato zingy soup with awesome Thai flavours. 

Get all your ingredients out ready and boil a full kettle of water for the stock. 

Break your mince up and roll it into small meatballs; don’t make them too big as you don’t want them to take too long to cook. 

I boil the rice separately which I cook slowly; if it is ready too soon it doesn’t matter as it is going in the soup and can be reheated in there.

Prep the shallot, garlic, tomato and celery.

Make the stock and add the Tom yum paste and Thai red curry paste to a large pan.      

Add palm sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, celery and shallot.

Stir for a moment until the pastes have melted.

It seems like a lot of ingredients but I find as I cook a lot of Thai, once you have the basic ingredients you can use them over and over like the pastes, the soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar.  Also in my kitchen, frozen ginger, frozen Kaffir lime leaves, Thai green curry paste, Masman curry paste and a 5kg bag of rice and several tins of coconut milk.

Pop in the meatballs; you will be surprised how quickly meat cooks when you boil it.  I have a tendency to over cook meat (inherited from my mother).   It takes about 5-10 minutes, then add the tomatoes in the last few minutes so they don’t go mushy. 

You don’t want to stir too much just leave the meatballs to cook.

Tip in the cooked rice.

 

Taste the soup and take a meatball out and chop in half to make sure they are cooked through.

Serve with a few coriander leaves.  

This is quite a filling soup and one bowl will feed 1 person but we tend to have 2 bowls each.

It is rather a hot and spicy soup due to the 2 tbsp of red curry paste.  Unless you really like it hot I’d suggest putting less curry and tom yum paste in, maybe try 2 tbsp. 

I have never cooked a mild version before, I like my Thai food hot and there are plenty of beautiful Thai recipes you can make that don’t involve tonnes of heat.

Enjoy