Thai Yellow Chicken Curry

A Thai friend who is a wonderful cook first taught me to make this, and I have cooked it my own way ever since. It is a mild, creamy yellow curry built on chicken thighs, potatoes and carrot, gentle enough for the whole family, and I serve it with jasmine rice pressed into balls rather than spooned onto the plate.

One thing to know before you start: for the first half hour it will look like soup, and that is correct. There is half a litre of stock in the pan as well as the coconut cream, and the long uncovered simmer is what turns it into a sauce. The rest is straightforward, and along the way I go through which cut of chicken to use, the difference between coconut milk and coconut cream, and how to pick or make a decent yellow curry paste.

If you want the darker, sweeter, warm-spiced end of Thai curry instead, my Thai Chicken Massaman Curry Recipe is the other one I make most often.

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What Cut of Chicken Should You Use?

When making Thai Yellow Chicken Curry, the type of chicken you choose can significantly influence the flavour and texture of the dish. Here’s a breakdown to help you decide and adjust your cooking process:

Boneless Chicken Thighs

Chicken thighs are my top pick for this recipe. They are naturally juicy, tender, and flavourful, making them perfect for a slow-simmered curry like this one. Thighs are forgiving when cooked longer, so even if they simmer a bit more than planned, they stay moist and delicious.

• Cooking Tip for Thighs: Sear them at the start for that golden-brown flavour, then simmer with the curry for 30-40 minutes to soak up the rich spices and coconut cream.

Chicken Breast

If you prefer a leaner option, chicken breast works well too. However, it cooks much faster and can dry out if overcooked. To avoid this, add the diced chicken breast during the last 10-15 minutes of cooking. This ensures it cooks through without losing its tenderness.

• Cooking Tip for Breasts: Sear them lightly at the start (optional) or skip the searing step altogether. Add them halfway through the simmering process to avoid overcooking.

Tofu or Plant-Based Options

For a vegetarian twist, you can swap the chicken for tofu or even chickpeas. Use firm tofu, cut into cubes, and add it during the last 10 minutes of cooking to keep its texture intact.

• Cooking Tip for Tofu: Add cubes of tofu in the final 10-15 minutes, allowing them to absorb the curry’s flavours while maintaining their firmness.

Coconut Milk vs. Coconut Cream: What’s the Difference and What Should You Use?

The creamy, rich base of Thai Yellow Chicken Curry comes from either coconut milk or coconut cream. While they’re both made from coconut flesh blended with water, there are some key differences that can affect your dish.

Coconut Milk is thinner and lighter, with a higher water content. It’s ideal for soups and lighter curries where you want a touch of creaminess without overpowering the other flavours. If you prefer a slightly lighter curry, you can use coconut milk, but you may need to simmer the dish longer to thicken the sauce.

Coconut Cream, on the other hand, is thicker and richer, with a higher fat content. It adds a luscious, velvety texture to the curry and a more pronounced coconut flavour. This is my go-to for Thai Yellow Curry, as it delivers that indulgent creaminess that perfectly balances the bold spices of the dish.

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A Tip for Freshness

One issue I encounter often when buying coconut milk or cream from supermarkets is that it’s not always stored properly. When this happens, the coconut milk or cream can develop an unpleasant smell, which can ruin the dish. To avoid this, I recommend heating the coconut milk or cream in a separate pan before adding it to your curry. This way, you can quickly check its freshness. If it smells bad or separates oddly, it’s best to discard it and use a fresh can.

Yellow Curry Paste: Buy It or Make It

Yellow curry is the one Thai curry that openly borrows. The Thai name, kaeng kari, is a curry word stacked on a curry word: kaeng is the Thai term for this sort of stewed dish and already existed, and kari is the English and Indian word layered on top of it. That is why the paste carries turmeric, cumin and coriander, and why most recipes for it, Thai ones included, reach for a spoonful of curry powder as an ingredient in its own right. It is also why it is the mildest of the three curry colours.

A shop-bought paste is a perfectly good answer and it is what the recipe card is written for. Mae Ploy is the one most Thai restaurant kitchens use and the easiest to find. Maesri sells its yellow paste as Karee, in a small tin, and it is the most spice-heavy of the three: its label bundles an entire curry powder blend, fenugreek and fennel included, into the base. Aroy-D is the gentlest, and the importer says so outright, because it uses fewer dried chillies than the rest of its own range. I use this Thai Yellow Curry Paste .

Two things worth knowing before you buy. Maesri contains wheat and mustard, both named allergens, through that curry powder blend. And if you are cooking for vegetarians, do not read a shrimp-paste-free ingredient list as a guarantee: Mae Ploy sells a separate jar labelled vegetarian, which tells you something about the standard one. Buy the jar that says so on the front.

Making it yourself is worth doing at least once, mostly because you can then set the heat yourself. This makes about a cupful, which is five or six curries, and it takes a proper twenty minutes of preparation rather than five.

Ingredients for the paste

• 3 dried red chillies, soaked in hot water for ten minutes and drained. This is the mild end on purpose. Add more if you want it hotter, and see the note below
• 5 cm piece of fresh turmeric, peeled and sliced, or 1 ½ tbsp ground turmeric
• 2.5 cm piece of galangal, or the same of ginger
• 3 lemongrass stalks, white part only, sliced thinly
• 5 small shallots
• 5 garlic cloves
• 3 coriander stalks, the stems rather than the leaves
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste, or a teaspoon of white miso for a vegetarian version
• 120 to 180 ml water

Method

1. Toast the coriander seeds in a dry pan over a medium heat for a minute or two, until they smell nutty, then let them cool.
2. Put everything into a blender with 120 ml of the water and blend to a thick paste, adding the rest of the water a splash at a time only if the blades are not catching. A blender gets you a finer paste than a food processor, and a small one works better than a large one because it keeps the mixture down by the blades.
3. Use 2 to 3 tbsp for a curry serving four, which is what the recipe card asks for.

Do not judge it by tasting it raw. On its own a fresh paste is sharp and faintly bitter, and every batch tastes like that. It mellows the moment it is fried and the coconut goes in.

On the heat, be prepared to go further than a recipe tells you. Three dried chillies is genuinely mild, and readers of other paste recipes routinely report that even the amount labelled very mild came out milder than they wanted. Start here, cook a curry with it, and put more in the next batch. It is far easier to add than to take away.

On galangal, do not treat ginger as a straight swap. They are not the same thing and they do not taste the same: galangal is sharp and piney with something almost citrus about it, where ginger is hot and sweet. Some recipes swap one for the other and some Thai cooks are firm that you never should. My own view is that if you cannot get galangal you are better off buying a paste than making one without it, because every jar and tin on the shelf contains galangal and a homemade batch with ginger in it does not. Look for frozen galangal first, though. It is far easier to find than fresh and it works perfectly well.

It keeps about a week in the fridge under a film of oil. Beyond that, freeze it: spoon it into an ice cube tray a tablespoon at a time, freeze, then bag the cubes, and it holds for about six months. Two or three cubes is a curry, and it goes into the pan straight from frozen.

Equipment You’ll Need

Almost nothing, but the width of the pan matters more than you would think.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Chicken thighs breast works and the card allows it, though add it later so it does not dry out over the full simmer. Firm tofu is the vegetarian route: press it, sear it hard, and stir it back in at the end rather than simmering it.
• Coconut cream a 400 ml tin of full-fat coconut milk works and is the more traditional choice. Reduced-fat coconut milk will make a noticeably thinner, less silky sauce, so if you use it, expect to simmer for longer.
• Potatoes waxy or all-rounder potatoes hold their shape over a long simmer. Floury ones such as Maris Piper or King Edward will start to break down and thicken the sauce, which some people actually prefer. Charlotte or new potatoes stay firmest.
• Fish sauce this is doing more work than the word “optional” suggests, and it is what makes the curry taste finished rather than flat. For a vegetarian version use light soy sauce with an extra squeeze of lime, which gets you most of the way.
• Yellow curry paste brands vary enormously in strength. Maesri is on the milder side, Mae Ploy is considerably hotter. Start at the lower end of the two to three tablespoons, taste after it has cooked out, and add more if it needs it.
• Chicken broth vegetable stock for a meat-free version, or water at a push. Because there is a lot of liquid here relative to most curries, using an over-salted stock cube will concentrate as it reduces, so go for a low-salt one.

How to Make Thai Yellow Curry, Step by Step

Full quantities are in the recipe card below. The two things that decide how this turns out are frying the paste properly at the start and giving it the full simmer at the end.

1. Sear the chicken, then lift it out. Non-stick pan or a large pot over a high heat with a tablespoon of oil, and colour the diced chicken all over. Take it out and set it aside. You are after colour here, not cooked-through: it goes back in and finishes in the sauce.
2. Onions and carrots in the same pan. About five minutes, until the edges start to catch and brown. That browning is quiet background sweetness in the finished curry.
3. Fry the curry paste for a minute. Do not skip this and do not rush it. Yellow curry paste needs a minute in hot fat to bloom, and paste added straight to liquid keeps a raw, slightly harsh edge that no amount of simmering removes.
4. Potatoes, broth and coconut cream in, chicken back in, then a long simmer. Bring it to the boil, drop it to a simmer and give it thirty to forty minutes. Here is the part worth knowing: at this stage it will look thin and soupy, and that is correct. This recipe carries half a litre of broth as well as the coconut cream, more liquid than most yellow curries, and the long uncovered simmer is precisely what reduces it into a sauce. Judge it at fifteen minutes and you will think you have made soup.
5. Season at the end: sugar, lime, fish sauce. This is the step that makes it taste Thai rather than merely mild. The brown sugar and lime set the sweet-sour balance, and the fish sauce is the savoury backbone underneath both. Add, taste, adjust, and keep going until it tastes vivid rather than polite.
6. Serve. With jasmine rice, spring onions or fresh coriander over the top, and chopped Thai red chilli for those who want the heat.

Recipe Card for Thai Yellow Chicken Curry

Tips for the Best Thai Yellow Curry

• The sauce is meant to look thin at first. This is the thing worth knowing before you start. There is a lot of liquid in the pan when everything goes in, and the thirty to forty minute simmer is what turns it into a sauce. If you taste at twenty minutes and it seems watery, that is normal and it is not finished. Keep it uncovered and let it reduce.
• Cook the paste out before the liquid goes in. A minute in the hot pan with the onions and carrots wakes the spices up and takes the raw edge off. Skipping it is the difference between a curry that tastes deep and one that tastes like paste stirred into coconut milk.
• Taper the paste to your brand. Two tablespoons of one brand can be hotter than three of another. Start low, and remember you can add more heat at the end but you cannot take it out.
• Sear the chicken properly and take it out. My recipe browns the thighs first, which most yellow curry recipes do not bother with, and it is worth the extra pan. The browning gives the sauce a savoury backbone, and removing the chicken means it is not being boiled for the full forty minutes.
• Season at the end, not the beginning. Sugar, lime and fish sauce go in once the sauce has reduced, because the balance changes completely as the liquid concentrates. Taste, then adjust.
• Stir the bottom of the pan. Potatoes settle and catch, and scorched curry cannot be rescued.

Variations

• With sweet potato swap half the potato for sweet potato. It breaks down a little and gives the sauce a natural sweetness that suits the turmeric.
• Vegetarian or vegan tofu or chickpeas instead of chicken, vegetable stock, and soy sauce with extra lime in place of fish sauce. Do check the paste, as many yellow curry pastes contain shrimp.
• With prawns add them in the last three or four minutes only. Any longer and they turn to rubber.
• More vegetables green beans, red pepper or baby corn in the last ten minutes keep their bite and add colour against all the yellow.
• Milder for children use half the paste, keep the coconut cream at full fat and leave the fresh chilli garnish off. It becomes a very gentle, almost sweet curry that children tend to like.

Storing, Freezing and Reheating

This keeps well and is better the next day, once the potato has had time to take on the sauce. Cool it reasonably quickly and keep it covered in the fridge for up to three days. Reheat gently in a pan, adding a splash of water or stock if it has thickened, and avoid a hard boil which can make coconut milk separate.

Freezing is where this one needs a warning. The curry itself freezes for up to three months, but potato does not freeze well in a sauce. It goes grainy and slightly mealy when thawed, which is a texture problem rather than a safety one. If you know you are going to freeze a batch, the best approach is to leave the potato out, freeze the curry, then boil fresh potato and add it when you reheat. Coconut milk can also look split after freezing; stir it gently over a low heat and it will come back together.

What to Serve With Thai Yellow Curry

🍽 Jasmine rice is the natural partner, and I press mine into little rice balls to serve alongside, which is how it is plated in the photos and something you will not see on many other recipes. Roti or flatbread for scooping is very good if you would rather. Because the curry is rich and mild, something sharp on the side earns its place: a quick cucumber salad with rice vinegar, or simply lime wedges and sliced fresh chilli so everyone can adjust their own bowl at the table.

FAQ for Thai Yellow Chicken Curry

What makes a curry yellow?

The colour comes from turmeric and yellow curry paste. Yellow curry is the mildest and most mellow of the Thai curries.

Is yellow curry spicy?

It is the gentlest Thai curry - warming rather than fiery. Add more curry paste or a fresh chilli if you like more heat.

What do you serve with yellow curry?

Steamed jasmine rice is classic, and roti or flatbread are great for scooping up the sauce.

Can I freeze it, and what happens to the potato?

The curry freezes for up to three months, but be warned about the potato: it turns grainy and mealy once frozen and thawed. It is perfectly safe, it just is not pleasant. If you are cooking a batch specifically to freeze, make it without the potato, then boil some fresh and stir it in when you reheat. Thaw overnight in the fridge and warm it gently, since a hard boil can split the coconut milk.

Which yellow curry paste should I buy, and how much?

Brand strength varies more than people expect. Maesri is one of the milder and more widely available ones, Mae Ploy is noticeably hotter, so the same spoonful is not the same heat. Start at two tablespoons, cook it out, then taste once the sauce has reduced and add more if it needs it. If you are using a mild paste you may want the full three or even a little beyond. Check the label if you are cooking for vegetarians, because most contain shrimp paste.

Can I use reduced-fat coconut milk?

You can, but you will feel the difference. The fat is what gives the sauce its silkiness and what stops it tasting thin once it has reduced. Reduced-fat versions have more water in them, so you will be simmering longer to get to the same place and the result is lighter in the mouth. If that is what you have, use it and simply give it more time.

Can I leave the fish sauce out?

Yes, though it does more than the word optional suggests. It is the savoury note that makes the curry taste finished rather than flat, and it works alongside the sugar and lime as the seasoning step at the end. For a vegetarian version, light soy sauce with an extra squeeze of lime is the closest substitute and gets you most of the way there.

What kind of potato works best?

Waxy or all-rounder potatoes hold their shape through the long simmer, which is what you want if you like distinct chunks. Charlotte and new potatoes are the firmest. Floury varieties such as Maris Piper will soften at the edges and thicken the sauce as they break down, which is not a fault and some people prefer it. Cut them into even quarters so they cook at the same rate.

Can I make it ahead of time?

It is genuinely better the next day. The potato absorbs the sauce overnight and the spices settle together. Cook it fully, cool it quickly, refrigerate, then reheat gently and adjust the lime and fish sauce before serving, since the seasoning reads flatter when it has been cold.

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A Few Words from the Chef

I hope you love this creamy and flavourful Thai Yellow Chicken Curry as much as I do! Let me know how yours turned out - drop a comment below and say, “Chef, this was delicious!” Or not so delicious, I’m all ears 😉. Khop khun kha!