Thai Fish Soup

Fish Soup Recipe Video

(Gaeng Som)

Fish-Soup-RecipeFish Soup – Thai Fish Soup a delicious spicy sour soup fit for a King and Queen and ideal to grace the table at a Thai banquet.

Thai Fish Soup, AKA Spicy Fish Soup comes in many varieties and so naturally there are many a recipe for fish soup to choose from. As usual Khwanjai shows you full traditional Thai Fish soup without dumbing down the recipe. There is only one ingredient which can sometimes be difficult to get – “Kachai” but we cover that in the tutorial.

Khwanjai’s Thai Fish Soup Recipe is usually served with other recipes as part of a Thai banquet see serving suggestions below for more details. This recipe involves quite a bit of work but the finished dish is worth every ounce of effort you invest into this lovely traditional Thai recipe for fish soup.

How To Make Fish Soup

The Ingredients:Fish-Soup-Ingredients
1 Fish of your choice (pictured is Snake Head Fish)
1 Steamed Sardine (tinned sardines are fine tho)
1 Chinese Lettuce
1 Small Cauliflower
Green Beans
1 Tbs Red Curry Paste
Tamarind Puree
Fresh Kachai
1/3 Cup Radish
4-5 Shallots
1 ts of Chicken Stock Powder
1 1/2 Tbs Palm Sugar
1 ts Salt
1 Tbs Fish Sauce
1/3 Cup Carrots
Cooking Oil

Preparation:
Cut fish as per video tutorial
Rinse and slice carrots and radish, leave to one side
Peel and roughly dice the shallots
Cut Chinese lettuce into spoon size squares
Green beans into logs and Cauliflower into spoon size flat florets
pestle-and-mortarNow we move into the Cruk Sac pictured left. Please don’t use a blender or you will have grey soup which will not smell as good
First in is the Kachai, pounding to a soft woody pulp
Next in are the shallots, pounding until fully mixed before adding the red curry paste, continue pounding until fully mixed, use a spoon to help turning if needed (see video)
Now you can add the sardines, (yes even tinned in tomato sauce if you like) and continue pounding until fish is completely mixed in and that’s that part completely done!
Have a little rest because your arms will be tired – not just a cooking class but an aerobics class too!

Cooking:
Heat 2-3 cups of oil in a wok, medium high heat and drop in the fish – deep fry, turning every 2-3 minutes until golden brown, great tip in video to stop fish sticking to the wok
At the same time boil a saucepan with 2-3 cups of water and add the contents of the pestle and mortar stirring well
Add chicken stock and salt fish sauce and Tamarind pureÈ, not forgetting the palm sugar and stir again until dissolved, taste test and adjust as required. The overall taste should be spicy sour with the faintest hint of sweet
Happy with the flavour?
Add the hard veggies – carrot and radish and leave to boil for 2-3 minutes check for taste again
Now add the last of the veggies all together and bring back to boiling
By now the fish should be cooked so it’s time to add the deep fried fish to the soup, stir it in 2 or 3 times and simmer for 3 minutes

That’s it … Done!

Serving suggestion:
Fantastic soup is almost always eaten with rice, it deserves a fantastic rice which is of course Jasmine rice. The amount we made for this Fish Soup Recipe is really enough for 4 people when served as compliment to other Thai dishes.

What would you have with it? Try our delicious Sweet and Sour Pork Recipe or several of our Stir Fry Recipes for that matter. Another useful addition which will also compliment is our Thai Omelette and we often have BBQ Pork Ribs also giving you a nice varied range of texture and flavours that all go together nicely.

You can see Jules discussing and eating this soup in the Thai Fish Soup video blog and he makes a discovery about Kachai. Our  Thai Food TV Blog often covers subjects not mentioned in the recipes.

Khwanjai’s Top Tips:
The ingredients (quantities) listed in the recipe are what Khwanjai actually used, you’ll see we used plenty of tamarind pureé and still not too sour so a good chance to practice your cooking by tongue.

Fantastic substitute for the Sweet Radish is the Red Radish pictured below, use a little less and slice very thinly to compensate for their extra pungency.Radishes

It really is a good idea to print the recipe to make your own notes not least because you may well be using a different fish and it’s a very long video.

This Fish Soup Recipe is the business, and you all know I’m not really a fishy fan. Plenty of scope for choosing your own fish, suggest bland tasting and not too bony! Similar but refreshingly different from Tom Yum Goong.

FYI. Snake head fish tastes like catfish and some eels I’ve eaten, the bottom line is I can not find another name for it so it’s probably a local breed. I have seen almost identical whilst scuba-diving locally but they are catfish as they have whiskers and in any case snake heads are freshwater fish.

The Radish, I discovered after making the video is “Sweet Radish” and often translated by Thais as Turnip even in Tesco Lotus (big supermarket chain). It tastes exactly like the Red Radish we all know and love (as pictured right) but a bit less pungent. I have now started to see the Thai radish creeping into British supermarkets.

Please share with your food lovin friends and leave your questions/comments below…

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