The BEST and WORST Thai Curry Paste - Taste Test!

[Music] Sawaddee Ka, welcome to hot Thai Kitchen  Thai curry is popular all over the world so much   so that my most popular video is my green curry  video and the question that I get asked a lot is   what is the best brand of Thai curry paste because  let's face it most of us are not gonna make it   from scratch Thai people included and my answer  usually goes something like this well I usually   go with my Ploy but this and this is also great  notice I never directly answer the question what   is the best brand because I actually don't know  I've been using my employee for years it's kind   of become a default for me but is it actually  the best well the only way to objectively find   that out is to do a blind taste test which I am  going to do today here's the plan I've chosen   five brands of Thai curry paste and first I'm  going to make just a basic curry sauce with them   and then taste them and rank them in order of my  preference and then I'm going to take my top and   my bottom choice and make a full curry with them  complete with meat vegetables and eat it with rice   to see if once all of those ingredients are added  is the difference still significant let's meet our   contestants and talk about how I chose them first  I narrowed it down to just red curry paste for   our test because it's the most basic paste it's  the most widely available and the most versatile   I used it in the most number of my recipes and  importantly every brand has a red curry paste   now there are many many Brands out there obviously  I can't possibly taste this all of them so I had   to narrow it down to a manageable number and here  is how I chose them first I chose only brands that   are commonly available outside of Thailand so  nothing obscure or local or specific to Canada   that you can't find second I chose brands that  have been around for quite some time and have good   reputation so they're all coming in with a certain  amount of cred finally I checked the ingredient   list to make sure that it's got all the things  you'd expect in a red curry paste without any   additives because a good crepe paste should just  be a mix of real food ingredients and with those   guidelines I arrived at these five Mae Ploy this  is my current go-to brand as I mentioned I just   want to note that it does contain shrimp paste so  if you're vegetarian this is going to be out by   default Aroy-D, this is another brand that I use  quite often because it's widely available they   also make my go-to coconut milk Maesri this is the  only one that comes in a can and also the only one   with added sugar which I've never actually noticed  until now so this might be a new thing Namjai I've   been seeing more of this lately and it's the  other one in our lineup that contains shrimp   paste finally Thai Kitchen which is not actually  something that I see often in Asian stores but   by far the most common one at the international  aisle of non-asian stores so if you can't find   anything else on this list you can probably find  this one before we taste a little background on   curry paste Thai curry paste is basically just a  mixture of ground up herbs and spices there are   tons of varieties red yellow green so on and  so forth now for each paste there is a basic   expectation of what it should taste like but like  any food everyone has their own recipe hence all   of these different brands on the market now if you  want to learn more about Thai curry paste I highly   suggest checking out my curry paste 101 video  where I go through what it is what's in it how to   use and store so on and so forth and I will link  to that below alright let's make our curry sauce   I'm measuring out all my ingredients by weights  for accuracy just a quick reaction after I've   just weighed everything out they all look visibly  different which is good because in the back of my   mind I was afraid that somehow these are actually  manufactured by the same company and they're just   different branding which happens but it appears  that that is not the case there are different   colors different textures they smell different  so this is good they should taste different to   make the curry sauce I'm first going to saute the  paste in some neutral oil for exactly two minutes   now usually I like to saute my curry paste  in reduced coconut milk as you may have seen   before in other videos but I want to eliminate  the potential differences between coconut milk   being reduced to different degrees so this  will help keep our samples more consistent   for some of these pastes they're starting out  drier and they're sticking to the bottom within   that two minutes and so I have to deglaze the  pot to prevent the curry paste from burning   then I'm going to add some coconut milk some  water and a little bit of sugar to help balance   the salt I'm not seasoning it with any fish sauce  right now because most of these paste have quite   a bit of salt in it and at this point without any  added meat or vegetables any added fish sauce is   probably going to make it too salty and that's  just gonna simmer for exactly five minutes to   allow for the flavors from the paste to integrate  into the liquid and that's our curry sauce and I'm   going to repeat this process for all five Brands  and to control for differences in evaporation   during simmering I weighed the final curry sauce  and added water to make them all weigh as much as   the heaviest one for the tasting I also reheated  them so they are roughly the same warm temperature   all right moment of truth first I'm gonna  have Adam come in and rearrange all of these I'm gonna be in here and not looking I'll let you move them back okay okay spicy, taking notes so I don't forget, it's  definitely spicy salty good flavor strength sweeter less salty very weak flavor   like I feel like I need to at  least double the paste in that one there's a lemongrass fiber  that wasn't ground quite fine quite salty yeah both of these are about  equally salty good flavor good strength I feel like I like the flavor of this better  I do not like the lemongrass fibers but the   flavor of this one is a Little Bit Stronger  then that spiciness saltiness about the same really weak and watery not too  salty though which is a positive good flavor but weak I'm gonna  compare the two weak ones oh this is by far the weakest this tastes  so watery this is my bottom pick so far this one is quite salty but  compared to my current top pick this one's a little more acidic so one  three and five are currently very very close   this one's prominently salty I feel like I taste  shrimp paste in this one it's a little bit more   funky okay I'm gonna try the weak ones again oh man this one is so watery  [Music] so hard to try it's so watery okay okay   here is my thought on this one three and five you  can't go wrong with any of these good flavor good   level of spice and quite a bit of saltiness which  is not always a positive because there are some   situations where it's too salty like if you want  to reduce a lot of paste to amp up the flavor but   then that makes it too salty so that's not always  a positive but flavor wise these are good these   two are weak this one has good flavor but it's  quite weak so you need to use more of it this one   is so watery so mild that it's it's so hard for me  to to even know how good the flavor is so for sure   according to this test this is my bottom pick and  this is kind of a problem because think about it   if I'm making a recipe and I'm using this one and  I tell you to put three tablespoons of curry paste   you go and you make yours with this one you're  gonna think that I gave you a week that's recipe   because it's so diluted right but it's not my food  or the fault of the recipe that you're following   but it's actually the paste because this is huge  how different these are now picking my top pick   we know that this is the bottom pick my  top pick let me just do this one more time splitting hairs to be honest like totally  splitting hairs at this point I'm going   to go with this one because I feel like  I can it's got a little bit more oomph   and that could be the shrimp paste and  I'm biased because I like shrimp paste yeah I feel like this one has  more oomph so that's my top pick   bottom pick okay let's reveal what is my top pick you know it it's my go-to it is Mae Ploy it is  Mae Ploy ladies and gentlemen which for those   of you who are vegetarian that is not good news  because Mae Ploy contains shrimp paste our worst   is Thai Kitchen which is not unexpected because  Thai Kitchen I think is made for not Thai people,   they don't sell it in Thailand for example so  they're probably wanting to make this milder   and weaker for those who are not used  to spice our third one which was decent   Namjai wow namjai came out pretty good namjai  came out pretty good this one also quite weak   I have a theory about what this is Maesri yes I  the reason I had a feeling this was Maesri was   because the paste was also quite wet so these  two were probably the ones that I didn't have   to deglaze at all because the paste already  had so much moisture in it which by default   means that they also have less seasoning and  spices and herbs in it and this one is Aroy-D there you go in conclusion Mae Ploy, Namjai, Aroy-D, all really good options  if you want no shrimp paste you want to go with   Aroy-D because Namjai and Mae Ploy both have  shrimp paste not surprisingly also my top picks   because shrimp paste really does add Umami and  oomph and and so that was not a surprise if you   are somebody who really needs things to be mild  and you want more room to adjust you want to be   able to like add more paste without making it too  strong or too salty then these two will be your   go-to now for our next test I'm going to take my  top pick and my bottom pick and I'm gonna try to   make the best curry I could possibly make with  them that means that for the Thai Kitchen one   I will add more paste I will probably add more  fish sauce than I will with this one I want to   bring them to their full potential and see yes  on a standardized test it's not performing as   well but can we work around it like can we just  add more stuff and it'll be just as good as this   one in the end let's find out for the curry  I'm going to bring out curry sauce to a boil   and then add a little bit of palm sugar and some  bamboo shoots once that comes back to a boil I'm   gonna add some chicken breast which has been  marinating in just a little bit of fish sauce   I'm gonna cook it for just a couple more  minutes until the chicken is done and then   I'm going to taste for seasoning and I want  to bring this to its optimal level and for   my apply I had to add just a little bit of  fish sauce and then off the heat and stir   in some Thai basil and that is it now this is  a basic chicken curry that is very similar to   my green curry recipe which I will link to  below in case you want to try this at home   for the Thai Kitchen I'm going to start by first  sauteing more curry paste and I'm basically   doubling it up once that's got its two minutes  of sauteing I'm gonna repeat the same process as   with the other curry but for this one I had  to add quite a bit more fish sauce to bring   it up to the optimal seasoning level so they  look very different here is our Thai Kitchen   and here's our maploy Thai Kitchen is so much  redder because I had to add more paste so what   this tells me is that they put a lot of chilies  so that the color is there but maybe there's less   of everything else so that's why the flavor  is so weak um and if you didn't know you look   at this automatically you're going to be like  yeah that looks better right but let's find out and to make this representative of real life I'm  gonna have it with rice who has curry without rice let's taste our good one first just  as a benchmark because we're trying   to determine whether we can bring this  up to the level of our paste of choice that's good good level of spice I would call  this mild it might be medium for   some people but I think this is a good  like crowd pleaser level it's very red there's like no heat like kid friendly so this is very interesting is it  bad? no. is it a meal I would enjoy?   for me it's a little it's still a little weak  for somebody for a kid this would be perfect   because it's not spicy at all it's still it's  kind of weird because it actually feels richer   and thicker like the the texture of the curry is  thicker which tells me that there's more solids   in it now we doubled the paste that would  make sense there should be more stuff in it   but it still tastes weaker than this one so I  don't know what the stuff is that is in here but   it's not really delivering the flavor that's in  this and it could it be shrimp paste I wouldn't   say so because the Aroy-D paste that that didn't  have shrimp paste seems to be able to deliver the   a good flavor as well but that might be one  of it so overall my conclusion is if you can   get Mae Ploy or one of the other two two top two  this one is is workable but still like it's even   if I tried my best it's still not as good not as  flavorful as this one but if you're very sensitive   to spice or you're cooking for kids maybe this  is the one to choose so the takeaway for me is   that there's a big range between Brands and when  you are cooking using store-bought curry paste you   cannot throw your judgment out the window you have  to taste and adjust and be prepared to add more if   needed if you happen to be using one of these so  I would say go with our top three if you can but   it's not a deal breaker if these are your only  options just know that you need to do some do   some extra work if you're following my recipes  I'm usually using either Aroy-D or Mae Ploy as   a test Namjai is close enough that if you're  using that you probably don't need to adjust if   following my recipes other people's rest recipes  who knows who knows what they are using so this   is why you have to use your judgment and that is  it I hope that was interesting and informative it   was definitely interesting for me if you have any  opinions at all about curry paste that you've used   in the past another brand that we didn't cover do  share with us in the comments below and a special   thanks to all of our patreon supporters who help  support the show and if you want to know what   that's all about how to get bonus content and have  direct access to me I will link to all that in the   description below thank you as always for watching  and I will see you next time, sawaddee ka [Music]

Channel: Pailin's Kitchen

Views: 428,983

Keywords: Hot Thai Kitchen, Thai food, Thai cuisine, Thai cooking, Thai, Thailand, Bangkok, street food, Southeast Asia, Asian cooking, Asian food, Asian cuisine, Asian recipe, Thai recipe, Cooking, cooking show, how to cook thai food, how to cook, thai curry paste, the best thai curry paste

Id: GC7ccNKatVU

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023