Spice up your midweek meals
This easy pork meatballs in red curry is a great, soul-warming dish.
- SERVES: 4
- PREP TIME: 20 mins
- COOK TIME: 30 mins
- DIFFICULTY: easy
- IDEAL FOR: family, midweek meal
Easy pork meatballs in red curry
Having a little spice in your midweek recipe repertoire keeps things interesting.
And is also a great way to get your veggie intake up.
Or a way to use up some of those vegetables sitting in your fridge.
And, it’s a great recipe that can be tweaked as long as you stick with a few basics.
Curry pastes are the key to a good curry.
But what’s the difference between them all?
What is the difference between Thai curries
Traditionally, all Thai curries were made with the same ingredients except for one thing: the chillies.
- Red curry – made with several red chillies for a fiery hot dish
- Green curry – made with green chillies
- Yellow curry – made with yellow chillies.
But as dishes have evolved and developed, new things were added to the dishes to enhance the differences to make them a bit more distinct.
While all three can be spicy, usually red is hot hot hot and green is milder, with yellow in between.
Green curry
The most popular of the three.
Thai Green Curry has gotten even greener over the years with the addition of ingredients like basil, coriander and kaffir leaf.
These ingredients mixed up with the green chillies, shallots, garlic, lemongrass and shrimp paste give the intense and fragrant flavour.
Red curry
Think chillies.
Sometimes as many as 20 fresh red chillies will be pounded into the paste.
Always expect heat when you pick red!
Often used with coconut milk to get the flavour but sooth the fire.
Yellow curry
As well as yellow chillies, turmeric is an important ingredient in Thai Yellow Curry.
A milder sauce, you’ll often find it being served with fish or chicken.
8 substitutes for coconut milk
1. Greek yoghurt
Greek yoghurt adds creaminess as coconut milk does in a sauce.
It’s a little tangier than coconut milk, so don’t use too much or taste as you go.
2. Heavy cream
Heavy cream adds richness.
Use 2 parts heavy cream to 1 part water to substitute for the consistency of coconut milk.
3. Sour cream
Sour cream works well as a thickener in curries.
But has a sweeter, more distinctive flavour than Greek yoghurt, so use a little and taste as you go.
4. Milk
Whole milk will be more watery than coconut milk, so use less than the recipe calls for.
5. Cashew cream
Cashew cream is a thick creamy paste made from soaked cashews.
It’s great for making plant-based recipes creamy.
6. Almond milk
Almond milk works as a substitute for coconut milk in curry, but it has a much thinner consistency.
Before adding you can mix in 1 teaspoon corn starch to thicken it.
7. Soy milk
Soy milk is like almond milk, it’s a bit watery so you can try adding corn starch to thicken it.
8. Oat milk
Oat milk is also like almond and soy milk so as above, use corn starch to thicken it.
References:
Recipe inspired by Delicious magazine
For more curry recipes, visit here.
Easy pork meatballs in red curry
Ingredients
- 500 g pork mince (high welfare)
- 1 lemongrass stalk, finely grated (white part of stalk)
- 2 tsp ginger, finely grated
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 3 tsp sambal oelek (substitute crushed red chili flakes, chili pepper, sriracha, and gochujang)
- 2 tbsp coconut oil (or olive oil or sunflower oil)
- 100 g red curry paste (or you can use green)
- 1/2 tsp castor sugar
- 500 ml chicken stock
- 250 ml coconut cream
- 2 kaffir lime leaves
- 200 g fine green beans
- 200 g baby spinach
- 200 g finely chopped broccoli
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tbsp lime juice
- serve with rice vermicelli or rice
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix the pork, grated lemongrass, ginger, cornflour and sambal oelek.Roll into small balls, place on a lined tray, and pop in the fridge while you prep the rest of the ingredients.
- On medium heat, in a saucepan add the oil and then the curry paste and sugar and stir for 4 minutes until the paste is lightly caramelised. Add the stock, coconut cream and lime leaves and bring to the boil. Cook for 6-8 minutes to reduce slightly. Lower the heat and add the meatballs and cook for 6 minutes or until just cooked. Add the beans, spinach and broccoli and cook for 3 minutes.
- Stir in fish sauce and lime juice. Nb: be careful with fish sauce as it can over-salt a dish so add 1 tbsp and taste, adjust to your preference.
- Serve on vermicelli or plain rice.
Notes
