Thai fish soup

Soups are a great winter dish, and this Thai fish soup is a fantastic meal for a cold winter night. This recipe is really simple and very quick to make, and is also healthy and tastes absolutely amazing. It does require some traditional Asian ingredients which are necessary for the authentic flavour, but they fairly easy to get at supermarkets.

Some of the ingredients for this recipe (and others) I buy in bulk and cut up into portions and freeze which makes it cheaper and easier. Ginger, turmeric, and galangal all freeze well and quality is not compromised when defrosting.

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon ginger, grated
20g fresh turmeric, grated
20g fresh galangal, halved (*optional – sometimes I don’t have any and it doesn’t seem to compromise the flavour)
1 stick lemon grass cut into pieces
4 firm white fish fillets (approx. 500g)
1 1/2 cups fish stock
400ml coconut cream
1 chilli to taste, sliced
500g of noodles (your choice)

To make the soup

This recipe is pretty simple, but you need to have everything prepared and ready to go. Take care with the turmeric as it will turn everything yellow that it touches yellow – and it’s really hard to get out.

Heat some peanut oil in a frypan and put some water on to boil for the noodles. Add garlic, ginger, turmeric and chilli to the frypan, stirring and cook until fragrant (about a minute or two). Add the stock, coconut cream, galangal, and lemon grass. Stir well to combine, and bring to the boil.

Once the soup is boiling, add the fish and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Cook the fish for about 8 minutes or until cooked as desired. It will depend on the type and thickness of the fish. Once the fish is cooked, discard the lemon grass and galangal pieces.

Finshing off

Remove the fish from the soup,  set aside and cover to keep warm. Bring the soup to the boil and cook out for 5 minutes. Now, chuck the noodles in the boiling water and cook for required time (normally 3 minutes). Once cooked, drain and get ready to serve.

To serve

Add a serve of noodles to each bowl and add a piece of fish. You can keep the fish whole, cut into small bits, or shred it – it’s totally up to you. Pour the hot soup over the fish and noodles, and add some garnish such as chopped shallots, fried crispy onion, and fresh sliced chilli. Enjoy.