Tom Yum Soup

Hello, and happy new year!

My next recipe is a Thai soup called Tom Yum, and it's one of my favourites. Often given as a starter in Thai restaurants, I think it serves just as well as a main with a bit of tasty flatbread for dipping. 

As much as I would love to say I made this from scratch... I didn't. I bought the soup base as a paste from B&M. It's quite rare that a vegan can do that, because 90+% of the pre-packaged pastes contain fish or prawns. In restaurants, the soup typically contains whole prawns as well, but these can be omitted and replaced with fresh mushrooms. In this case, I used mushrooms and vegan prawns - Yes, vegan prawns!! I got these from a website called Veggie World, who have very good service despite a somewhat antiquated payment system.

I just followed the recipe on the jar of paste, so this is less a recipe and more of a review of an existing recipe. Nonetheless, I would recommend it.

Ingredients

• Tom Yum paste
• 70 g Coconut milk
• 4 Chestnut mushrooms, quartered (these must be very fresh!)
• 4 Vegan prawns
• Veg oil
• A little fresh coriander for garnishing

The Method

As I said, I just followed the recipe on the jar! If you are using a pre-bought paste, you should do the same. 

It was just a case of frying the paste in a little oil for 30 secs or so, then adding the coconut milk (70 g), followed by the prawns and mushrooms on boiling. This was allowed to simmer until all the ingredients were cooked. The soup was transferred to a bowl, and garnished with fresh coriander.

The Result

Beautiful Thai soup with that classic coconut-lemongrass flavour. This took me around 20 mins to make from start to finish, so the convenience factor was high as well! I enjoyed this with a bit of Kurdish flatbread to dip - maybe not a classic combination, but fusion cooking is all the rage these days!

Hope you're lucky enough to have a local B&M - if you do, I can highly recommend this delicious paste. Also, the vegan prawns are worth trying - although the delivery cost through this company is high, it's worthwhile if you buy a few items at a time.

Enjoy!

Callum