Tom yum goong (Hot and sour prawns soup)

As a fan of Asian food, I love Thai recipes. I’m lucky to have this blog to show my passion for Thai cooking. I also love exploring other cultures and have made friends over the years, including in Thailand. Even though the majority of my Asian cooking comes from traditional recipes, I do like to experiment.

These days, I find my cooking repertoire to be pretty pitiful. I don’t keep myself well-stocked with interesting ingredients, and I don’t have a great number of recipes that I use often. Cooking a daily meal for myself is a common chore, but something I do only when I’m tired of eating ramen or ready to spend a half hour cooking something complicated. All I want is a quick meal that’s easy to prepare (and eat) and that satisfies me. Something that, with a few ingredients, I can make myself. Something that doesn’t demand a lot of effort.

Tom yum goong (Hot and sour prawns soup) is a popular Thai dish. It is a spicy and sour soup made with small prawns and various herbs. Tom yum goong (Hot & sour prawns soup) is a very popular Thai soup served in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. Tom yum goong is made of prawns, fish or chicken, tamarind, chili, and a well-balanced amount of spices. We have tried to try to make this soup at home by mixing the ingredients together and find out that it is quite difficult to make this soup in our home. Therefore, we decided to buy this soup from a local shop. We used very simple ingredients and the recipe. Read more about clear tom yum soup recipe and let us know what you think.

Tom yum is a Thai soup that is extremely popular and has a lot of health advantages because to the herbs and spices it contains. Galangal, lemon grass, lime leaves, and Thai birds red chilli make up the base stock. This soup is prepared with chicken, prawns, veggies, and fish (tom yum gai).

I used prawns to make this dish. I used prawn shells as stock after boiling them in water. Instead of galangal, I used ginger. I couldn’t find fresh lime leaves, so I used frozen crushed lime leaves instead. The lime leaves and lemon grass have a strong lemon flavor and a pleasant aroma. This soup is also known as a fragrant soup. The chilies used are birds eye red chillies, which are very spicy; however, you may use any other red chilli that you have on hand. Shrimp paste is also used in tom yum soup, but I didn’t use it. You may create a delicious tom yum soup by combining chilli oil with shrimp paste from the market, adding tamarind juice instead of lime leaves, and shredding lime rind (skin of lime) instead of lime leaves. This soup has a lot of different variants, which I’ll go through one by one.

This soup is spicy, sour, and delicious. Among other soups, it is my favorite. That is why I have tested so many different variations and am sharing them with you.

For this dish, we’ll need more prawn shells for the stock and less shrimp flesh for the soup.

Ingredients

To make prawn stock

• • 1/2 kilogram prawns (shell on)
  • 4 to 5 cups water

Paste-making by crushing

• • 2 lemon grass
  • 8 oz. coriander roots and stems
  • 1 teaspoon or a tiny slice of ginger
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons lemon leaves
  • 2 red bird’s eye chilies
  • 3 cups prawn stock for boiling herbs

For soup

• prawns (12 oz.)
• 1 lemon grass
• 2 red chillies (sliced)
• 3 sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 carrot (sliced)
• 1 tbsp jaggery (palm sugar)
• 2 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 1/2 teaspoon lemon leaves
• 6 tsp lemon juice (again)
• 1/3 cup chopped coriander leaves
• a few drops of chilli oil (shrimp paste) (optional)
• 1/3 cup water

Method

There are three stages in this process.

Making prawn stock is step one.

b. Herbs cooked in prawn stock

c. Seasoning the stock with vegetables and prawns

To create prawn stock, combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

• • Remove the prawn shells, wash them well, and save them for stock. Set aside the prawns.
  • Put 4 to 5 cups of water in a pot to boil stock, add the prawn shells with their heads, and when it comes to a boil, reduce to a low heat and simmer for 15 minutes with the top closed.
  • Strain it into a container and set it aside.

Stock of boiled prawns with herbs

• • If you don’t have a pestle mortar, pound all of the contents together with whatever heavy metal or utensil you have.
  • Crush the coriander roots first, then the rest of the ingredients one by one; it should be mashed coarsely, not like a paste, as seen in the photo.
  • Add this crushed combination to the prawn stock and bring to a boil, then reduce to a low heat and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the stock becomes aromatic and the color changes with the herbs.
  • I took 3 cups of prawn stock and put the rest in the freezer.
  • Strain the stock again and use it for soup; the stock may have decreased, but it still has a pleasant fragrance and flavor.

Soup

• In a vessel, combine the stock, chopped mushrooms, and carrot, and cook for 5 minutes.
• Now add the fish sauce, chilies, a few pieces of lemon grass (chopped into tiny pieces), coriander leaves, and lemon juice, and simmer for 5 to 8 minutes, or until all of the veggies are well cooked.
• If the stock has to be replenished, add water and bring to a boil.
• Now add the raw prawns and cook until they are fully cooked. Turn it off.
• Taste the soup to see whether it needs additional fish sauce or lemon juice.
• Serve in a dish with a few coriander leaves on top and some chilli oil drizzled on top (optional).
• Taste the soup before adding the chilli oil; it should be spicy and sour, with a nice flavor and taste. When you add chilli oil to the same soup, it changes the flavor and taste.
• It is your option whether or not to use chilli oil; it is not required.

Notes

• If the water in the stock reduces and there isn’t enough stock, add water and boil again to obtain a sufficient quantity of stock. When the stock is simmered, it has a wonderful flavor and absorbs all of the flavors of the components.
• You may add another chilli if you want it to be a bit spicier.
• The primary component, lemon grass, provides the most flavor.
• Chilli oil comes from the Lotus brand, and it’s easy to find.
• I didn’t use any salt since fish sauce already has salt.
• You may prepare chicken soup using chicken stock or chicken cube (knorr) using the same ingredients. I occasionally use chicken cube for prawn soup since prawn stock is not always available; it has a nice flavor.
• You may substitute lime peel for lime leaves, and coriander stems for coriander roots if you don’t have any.

Tom yum goong is a Thai dish consisting of spicy, sour, thick and sweet soup. It is traditionally made with full-flavored prawns. The dish is served with rice noodles, basil, bean sprouts, peanuts and lime. It is one of the best known Thai dishes worldwide.. Read more about seafood tom yum soup recipe and let us know what you think.

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Alma Bax

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