A shortcut recipe for a Southern Thai Pork ribs curry with a zesty, spicy, sweet, sour Thai curry sauce…yum.
I was looking for dinner ideas yesterday and stumbled upon a recipe for this traditional Southern Thai “dry curry”, called this because it doesn’t have coconut milk in it. Now this is a new delicious discovery!
Shortcut Recipe
The traditional Thai dry curry recipe involves making the hot spice paste from scratch, which looked quite involved ..probably worth it if a larger amount and all the fresh ingredients required are available.
To bypass making the paste from scratch, but try to achieve the flavours outlined in the original recipe, I decided to use a bought red curry paste as a base and add additional ingredients such as turmeric, lemongrass, lime zest, fresh chillies and garlic pounding these to a paste first and then adding the bought curry paste.
The resulting paste worked really well. This is the only hard work you will have to do as the rest is just simmering it all together for about an 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Using lean pork ribs with very little fat also meant that the end result wasn’t overly oily/fatty.
My additional ingredients
I also added small eschallots and chopped green beans which are optional but the sweetness of the onions and crunch of the green beans went well with the succulent, lip smacking ribs!
This will be going on a family favourites list!
- Ingredients
- 1 large rack of “American style” pork ribs, ask the butcher to cut in half vertically. (About 600g)
- 12 kaffir lime leaves
- 1 stick lemongrass
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 6 fresh red chillies
- Knob of fresh ginger (about equal to quantity of garlic)
- 1.5 teaspoons turmeric powder
- 1 teaspoon shrimp,paste (optional)
- Zest of 1 lime
- 7 heaped teaspoons of bought Thai red curry paste
- Juice of 1 lime
- 1 tablespoon of cracked black pepper
- 1 teaspoon white pepper
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 6 cups of water
Method:
1. Cut all the ribs into individual pieces slicing between them.
2. Slice 1/2 the stick of lemongrass, chop up 3 chillies, ginger, garlic and put into a mortar and pestle. Add the lime zest and pound all the ingredients until a paste forms.
3. Add the turmeric powder to the paste and mix through.
4. Add the bought curry paste and shrimp,paste and pound/mix together with your paste to amalgamate.
5. Heat oil in a heavy based pot (which has a lid), add curry paste and the 3 other chillies (left whole with stems removed). Stir fry paste until it is fragrant.
6. Add 1/2 cup or so of water to loosen up the paste, then add pork ribs and stir to coat ribs in sauce stirring continuously so ribs don’t stick and paste doesn’t burn. Add additional water if necessary. You just want the meat to “seal” rather than brown.
7. Add kaffir lime leaves, rest of water, fish sauce, black pepper, white pepper, sugar and bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 40 minutes.
8. Add eschallots, lime juice and stir.
9. After another 15-20 minutes, check curry is not sticking, see if your meat is tender. Add green beans, and a bit more water if necessary.
10. Cook for 5-8 minutes until green beans are just tender. Sauce should be well reduced and you will see the oil separating slightly on the sides. You want the sauce to be coating the ribs!
11. Garnish with finely sliced lime leaves, chopped coriander and serve with jasmine rice, and an empty bowl on the side for your rib bones!
