Authentic Thai Yellow Curry Chicken

This authentic Thai yellow curry chicken recipe utilizes fresh ingredients to create an authentic and mouthwatering meal.

While its undeniably delicious, is Thai yellow curry healthy?

Thai yellow curry is a very unhealthy dish due to its high fat content from the coconut milk and heavy usage of carbs from the rice. A serving of Thai yellow curry can run up to 700 calories, largely due to the fat content from coconut milk, which is a whopping 12 grams of fat per serving, and carbs from the rice that the curry is eaten with. 

Luckily, with a few ingredient swaps, you can easily make a healthier version.

✅ Why This Recipe Works

Easy to make – No hours of prep in the kitchen or chopping needed. This dish will come together in about 30 minutes.

Restaurant quality taste from home – By utilizing the key Thai curry making techniques from my cooking class at the Blue Elephant cooking school, you can make an authentic Thai yellow curry from home

Healthy and nutritious – Tweaked to be lower in calories and fats and bulked up with protein, this is a great healthy Thai food recipe that will help you achieve your fitness goals

💭 What is Thai Yellow Curry?

Thai yellow chicken curry, or gaeng garee, is a popular flavorful Thai curry dish consisting of chicken pieces simmered in a delicious coconut curry sauce. The delicious herbs and spices from the curry mixed with juicy chicken pieces and paired for rice is a mouthwatering combo. While living in Thailand for a month, I was able to take a cooking class at the Blue Elephant cooking school, where I learned how to make yummy traditional Thai curries.

🍎 Calories and Nutrition - Make It Healthy

In this recipe, I used key ingredient swaps from my Tips to Make Healthy Thai Curry guide to make this a more macro-friendly and calorie-conscious meal. Here are some key tweaks I made:

• Chicken – Opt to use lean protein like chicken thigh. Can also use chicken thigh, shrimps, fish, or seafood for other lean protein sources. 
• Coconut Milk – Use light coconut milk - a serving of light milk is 45 calories vs 120 calories from normal coconut milk due to less fat content as the light version has less coconut cream. 
• Portion sugar and seasonings mindfully – Used 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1 tablespoon of fish sauce. Both are essential to the curry flavor and 1 teaspoon of sugar is only 15 calories of sugar. 
• Portion the rice – I used 1 serving of jasmine rice at 160 calories
• Use cooking spray – Instead of traditional oil for everything that was sautéd or fried. 1 tablespoon of olive oil adds a whopping 120 calories to the dish, whereas cooking spray is 0 calories.

For a detailed breakdown of each ingredients, their portioning, and how they make up the nutrition profile of the authentic Thai yellow curry chicken recipe, you may refer to the table below:

📋 Ingredient Notes

Yellow Curry Paste – I made yellow curry paste from scratch using a mortar and pestle. Yellow curry paste is a mixture of lemongrass, shrimp paste, coriander, cumin, galangal, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, Thai chilis, and turmeric.

To make things easier, you can also use pre-made curry paste. Mae Ploy brand is a favorite among Thai cooks due to it's usage of shrimp paste, a key ingredient for authentic Thai curry.

Chicken – I opted for boneless skinless chicken thigh for optimal texture. You can also use boneless chicken breasts too, but it may be a little dry. I would advise against using chicken with skin, as it adds about 100 more calories per serving, largely from fat. 

Coconut Milk – Used 1 serving of light coconut milk - used warm water to deglaze as needed.

Seasonings – The curry sauce is often seasoned with fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice to give it a balanced flavor. Palm sugar is what's traditionally used but both brown sugar and white sugar also work.

Rice – Traditionally, Thai curry is served with Jasmine rice. You can also use brown rice if you'd prefer.

See my recipe card below for a complete list of the ingredients with measurements.

📖 Substitutions and Variations

Galangal sub – Galangal is a relatively harder to find herb. I was able to find it at HMart as well as my local asian markets. You can order dried galangal online or substitute by using ginger and a spritz of lemon juice.

Kaffir Lime Leaves – Kaffir lime leaves are also a harder to find herb. I've also been able to find it at HMart as well as my local Vietnamese grocery store, or find dried kaffir lime leaves online. If you cannot find it, you can just omit it.

Adjust spiciness – Use no chilis for no spice, 1 Thai chili for a mild spice, and 2-3 chilis for a medium to heavier spice.

Make red or green curry instead – Check out my authentic Thai red curry recipe and Thai green fish curry to see how.

Switch up the rice with Brown rice, white rice, mixed grain rice or cauliflower rice – Health wise, they are all similar in calories and macros, with mixed grain rice slightly higher in calories (190 calories vs 160 calories for one serving). Cauliflower rice is a good option for those who prefer a low carb diet.

Switch up the protein – Yellow curry goes well with seafood as well. Shrimp, crab meat, and squids are some of my favorite seafoods to make the curry with.

🔪 Step By Step Instructions

Prepare the rice – Ideally make the rice beforehand so that you can put the curry together when everything is done.

Make the curry paste – Gather the yellow curry past ingredients together. Slice the lower half of the lemongrass into small slices until the purple rings disappear. Crush the garlic with the back of your knife and de-stem the kaffir lime leaf. Add all the curry paste ingredients together in a mortar and pestle. Grind until the mixture is a smooth paste, about 5 minutes. Alternatively, you can use a food processor. 

Prepare the vegetables – Cut the carrots, onion, and garlic. 

Sauté the curry paste –  Use cooking spray and spray a skillet, then saute the curry paste along with the garlic and onions.

Add the coconut milk – Turn the stove to low heat and add in coconut milk. High heat will make the milk evaporate very fast. If that happens, you can deglaze the sauce with water.

Cook the veggies and chicken – Add the vegetables and the chicken into the curry and cook for about 3-5 minutes on each side, or until the chicken is cooked through thoroughly.

Season to taste – Add the fish sauce and sugar into the curry mixture. Taste and adjust if needed.

Serve and enjoy – Garnish with cilantro and Thai chilies if desired and serve with rice, and enjoy your delicious yellow curry recipe.

💭 Recipe FAQs

💡Expert Tips

Water to deglaze as needed – If the coconut milk seems to be evaporating too much, make sure the heat is lowered and deglaze the pan with water as needed

Add turmeric later on – If your mortar and pestle is white and you want to have an easier time cleaning, add in the turmeric while your cooking the curry to prevent the mortar from staining. 

Use a mortar and pestle for ultimate flavor – The mortar and pestle releases flavors in the herbs that cannot be achieved with a food processor, making the most authentic curry paste. This mortar and pestle on Amazon is relatively inexpensive and will be your new favorite kitchen tool.

Kaffir Lime Leaf Stem – Be sure to destem the kaffir lime leaves - the stem has a bitter flavor that can be unpleasant. To destem, fold the leave in half and cut off the stem. 

How to use lemongrass – For the curry paste, we will use the lower white half of the lemongrass stalk. Slice the lemongrass widthwise, until the purple rings begin to disappear.

🥡 Storage

Curry Paste – Homemade curry paste is great to make ahead and store. You can keep it in a closed glass container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. Alternatively, you can store it in ice cube trays and freeze it up for up to 3 months.

Overall Dish – After you've made the dish with the coconut milk and chicken, you can store it in the fridge for up to 2-3 days.

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