Khrua Thai · The Thai Kitchen

Thai Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Step into a kitchen where the curry paste is pounded by hand, the coconut cream is cracked in the pan until the oil rises, and the wok never sees anything but coconut oil and honest pork fat. Sharp, fragrant, and completely without shortcuts.

Explore the Recipes
Coconut Oil ✦ Coconut Cream ✦ Pork Fat
An elegantly plated Thai dish on a dark table
✦ Massaman Nuea
From the recipe collection
Maphrao

Coconut First

Cold pressed coconut oil and thick first press cream carry every curry in this collection. Crack the cream in the pan until the oil separates and the paste blooms, exactly as it has always been done.

Man Mu

Rendered Pork Fat

Long before the supermarket aisle arrived, the Thai wok ran on rendered pork fat. It takes fierce heat without turning bitter and gives fried fish a crust that no seed oil can match.

Mai Mee

Never Seed Oil

No palm, no soy, no canola. Only the fats that the market cooks and the grandmothers used, from the pounding of the paste to the last spoonful.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Thai Recipes

Six dishes from the home kitchens and market stalls of Thailand, each cooked in the honest fats that let the herbs and the chilli speak.

Phak Tai A rich brown beef curry with potatoes and peanuts in a bowl

Massaman Nuea

Slow beef curry cracked in coconut cream

2 hr 30 min·4 servings·Medium

The gentlest curry in the Thai repertoire and the one that rewards patience most. The cream is cracked until the oil rises, the paste is fried in that oil, and the beef takes two slow hours to give in.

Ingredients

  • 800 g beef shin, cut into large pieces
  • 400 ml thick coconut cream, first press
  • 400 ml coconut milk
  • 4 tbsp Massaman curry paste
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 3 potatoes, in large chunks
  • 1 onion, in wedges
  • 80 g roasted peanuts
  • 3 tbsp palm sugar
  • 3 tbsp tamarind water
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 2 bay leaves and 1 cinnamon stick

Instructions

  1. Heat the coconut cream in a heavy pan over medium heat and let it bubble for 8 minutes until the oil separates and pools at the edges. This step is the whole dish, do not rush it.
  2. Add the curry paste to that oil with the coconut oil and fry for 4 minutes, pressing it against the pan, until it smells sweet and toasted.
  3. Turn the beef through the paste until every piece is coated, then pour in the coconut milk with the cinnamon and bay.
  4. Simmer very gently, uncovered, for 90 minutes, stirring now and then.
  5. Add the potatoes, onion and peanuts and cook 30 minutes more, until the beef gives way to a spoon.
  6. Season with palm sugar, tamarind and fish sauce, tasting as you go, and rest it off the heat for 10 minutes before serving with jasmine rice.
Talay A whole fried fish covered in a red chilli and garlic sauce

Pla Rad Prik

Whole fried fish under a sweet chilli sauce

45 min·2 servings·Medium

A whole fish fried in rendered pork fat until the skin shatters, then flooded with a sauce of chilli, garlic and tamarind while it is still crackling.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole sea bass or snapper, scored to the bone
  • 400 g rendered pork fat for frying
  • 3 tbsp rice flour
  • 6 red chillies, chopped
  • 8 garlic cloves
  • 3 coriander roots
  • 3 tbsp palm sugar
  • 3 tbsp tamarind water
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • Coriander leaves to finish

Instructions

  1. Dry the fish thoroughly and dust it inside the scores with rice flour.
  2. Heat the pork fat in a wok until a crumb sizzles instantly. Lower the fish in and fry for 7 minutes a side, spooning fat over the top.
  3. Lift onto a rack and let it drain while you make the sauce.
  4. Pound the chillies, garlic and coriander roots to a rough paste in a mortar.
  5. Fry the paste in 2 tbsp of the hot fat for 2 minutes, then add the palm sugar, tamarind and fish sauce and let it turn glossy.
  6. Set the fish on a platter, pour the sauce over the length of it, and finish with coriander leaves.
Suan Khrua A wok of stir fried mixed green vegetables with garlic

Pad Pak Ruam Mit

Market vegetables tossed in coconut oil

20 min·4 servings·Easy

The plate that balances everything else on the table. Whatever the market gave you, thrown into a screaming hot wok with coconut oil and garlic and out again in four minutes.

Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp coconut oil
  • 6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  • 200 g long beans, cut in lengths
  • 150 g broccoli florets
  • 1 carrot, thinly sliced on the angle
  • 100 g baby corn, halved
  • 150 g Chinese cabbage, torn
  • 2 tbsp oyster sauce
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tsp palm sugar
  • 4 tbsp stock or water
  • White pepper

Instructions

  1. Have every vegetable cut and within reach before you light the flame, because there is no time once it starts.
  2. Heat the wok until it smokes faintly, then add the coconut oil and the garlic and count to ten.
  3. Throw in the hardest vegetables first, the carrot and the broccoli, and toss hard for a minute.
  4. Add the beans and baby corn with a splash of the stock and keep everything moving.
  5. Add the cabbage last with the oyster sauce, fish sauce and palm sugar, and toss for 40 seconds only.
  6. The vegetables should still squeak against the teeth. Finish with white pepper and serve immediately.
Tom A pale coconut soup with mushrooms, chilli and coriander in a bowl

Tom Kha Gai

Chicken in coconut cream with galangal

35 min·4 servings·Easy

Cooling and sharp at once. The galangal, lemongrass and lime leaf are bruised rather than chopped, so they perfume the coconut cream without ever ending up on the spoon.

Ingredients

  • 500 ml coconut milk
  • 250 ml thick coconut cream
  • 400 g chicken thigh, sliced
  • 1 thumb of galangal, sliced into coins
  • 2 lemongrass stalks, bruised and cut in lengths
  • 6 kaffir lime leaves, torn
  • 200 g straw or oyster mushrooms
  • 4 tbsp lime juice
  • 3 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tsp palm sugar
  • 4 bird's eye chillies, bruised
  • Coriander to finish

Instructions

  1. Warm the coconut milk with the galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves over low heat for 10 minutes. Never let it boil hard or the cream will split.
  2. Slide in the chicken and poach it gently for 8 minutes.
  3. Add the mushrooms and the coconut cream and give it 4 minutes more.
  4. Take the pot off the heat before seasoning, which keeps the lime bright.
  5. Stir in the fish sauce, palm sugar, bruised chillies and finally the lime juice, then taste and adjust.
  6. Ladle into bowls, leaving the woody aromatics behind, and scatter coriander over the top.
Khanom Small round coconut pancakes cooking in a dimpled cast iron pan

Khanom Krok

Coconut cream pancakes cooked in a dimpled pan

40 min·24 pieces·Medium

Street corner pancakes with a crisp rice flour shell and a centre that never fully sets. Two batters, one savoury and one sweet, poured one on top of the other.

Ingredients

  • 150 g rice flour
  • 30 g cooked jasmine rice
  • 350 ml coconut milk
  • 1 tsp salt
  • For the top layer: 200 ml thick coconut cream, 2 tbsp rice flour, 3 tbsp sugar, a pinch of salt
  • Coconut oil for the pan
  • Sliced spring onion or sweetcorn to finish

Instructions

  1. Blend the rice flour, cooked rice, coconut milk and salt into a thin batter and rest it 20 minutes.
  2. Whisk the top layer ingredients together separately until smooth.
  3. Heat a dimpled khanom krok pan and brush every well generously with coconut oil.
  4. Fill each well two thirds with the base batter and let it set around the edges, about 90 seconds.
  5. Spoon the sweet coconut layer on top of each and scatter with spring onion or corn.
  6. Cover for 3 minutes until the shells lift away cleanly but the centres still wobble. Pair two together and eat them hot.
Khong Wan Sliced ripe mango beside a mound of coconut sticky rice

Khao Niao Mamuang

Mango with coconut sticky rice

1 hr plus soaking·4 servings·Easy

The dessert everyone remembers. Glutinous rice steamed over water, then folded through warm salted coconut cream and left to drink it in while the mango is sliced.

Ingredients

  • 350 g glutinous rice, soaked at least 4 hours
  • 300 ml thick coconut cream
  • 80 g palm sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 large ripe mangoes
  • 2 tbsp coconut cream for the top
  • 1 tbsp rice flour
  • 1 tbsp toasted split mung beans or sesame seeds

Instructions

  1. Drain the soaked rice and steam it over boiling water in a cloth lined basket for 25 minutes, until translucent and tender.
  2. Warm the coconut cream with the palm sugar and salt until it dissolves, but do not let it boil.
  3. Tip the hot rice into a bowl, pour over three quarters of the warm cream, stir once and cover for 20 minutes so it drinks it all in.
  4. Thicken the reserved cream with the rice flour over low heat until it just coats a spoon, then cool it.
  5. Peel and slice the mangoes into thick cheeks.
  6. Mound the rice beside the mango, spoon the thickened cream over the rice, and finish with toasted mung beans or sesame.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Jonogu Khrua

Jonogu Khrua is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Thailand, where a meal is built from four directions at once, hot and sour and salty and sweet, and no single one is allowed to win. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked away from the tourist streets, with the paste pounded in a granite mortar and the coconut cracked properly in the pan.

Our one house rule is an old one: cold pressed coconut oil, first press coconut cream, and honest pork fat rendered at home. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never belonged in the kitchens we learned from.

Chok dee, may your table always be full.