Wendyl Nissen: Solution to curry in a hurry

Naturally flavoursome ingredients make this an excellent option to have on hand.

Most of us have done it. Gone to the Asian store and bought galangal, lemongrass, shrimp paste and the rest and spent most of our day off making a curry.

I like to make my own from scratch but sometimes it would be nice to have it all done for you. I am generally quite wary of curry sauces because I worry that artificial flavours, colours and preservatives will be used to keep the price down.

So I was delighted to find this product on the supermarket shelf because it appeared to be reasonably priced and full of real ingredients.

Ingredients (in order of greatest quantity first)

Coconut milk (52%) (coconut meat, water, emulsifier (435)

This is coconut milk as you will find it in the supermarket. The emulsifier is polysorbate 60, which is found in most coconut milks to help keep the oils and water in an emulsion.

Water

Green curry paste (10%) (green chilli, lemongrass, garlic, kaffir lime peel, galangal, coriander seed, pepper, cumin, turmeric, shrimp paste, salt)

This is a premium curry paste with lots of great spices for flavour. Galangal is a popular ingredient in Thai cooking and is similar to ginger but has a slightly different taste. Shrimp paste is made from fermented ground shrimp mixed with salt.

Palm sugar

Don't panic, palm sugar is not the same as palm oil as it is manufactured by taking the sap from various palm trees, which doesn't harm the tree.

Vegetable oil

Not sure what oil is in here.

Fish sauce

This is made from fermented fish and salt. In Thai cuisine it provides a nice salty flavour.

My recommendations

This is a great product to grab on your way home with some meat, fish or chicken and a few veges. Put it all together and cook for 20 minutes while you prepare some rice and you have a curry that has real ingredients, except you didn't have to source them all, grind them up and make it from scratch.

I've stocked my pantry with a few of these for Friday night curries and will no longer spend valuable time trying to create it authentically.