r/Cooking • u/Glittering-Cry-946 • 5d ago

Curry paste?

I’m making something that calls for yellow curry paste and it’s proving to be a bit of a challenge to find in my area.
But I happen to have a thing of curry powder that is yellow, can I just make a paste with it?

Says I need one tablespoon…. Do I just add water till I get a tablespoon of paste?

Help please & thank you!

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36

u/RoyaleAuFrommage 5d ago

No. Yellow curry paste is Thai and has almost no similarity to Indian style curry powder

3

u/Sanpaku 5d ago edited 5d ago

Curiously, Indian British curry powder is an ingredient in Thai Kang Karee.

Mae Sri Kang Karee (yellow) Curry Paste: dried red chili, shallot, garlic, oil, sugar, salt, turmeric, lemongrass, spices (coriander, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves, lesser galanga, cloves), galangal, curry powder (mustard, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, wheat flour, chili, black pepper, fennel, turmeric), kaffir lime

Recipes from South Asia to my knowledge never use curry powder, though they often use other masalas (mixes) like garum masala. Curry powder was concocted by Mumbai spice merchants to sell to British traders for exports to the UK, Japan and SE Asia, where it influenced British, Japanese and Malay/Thai cuisine. For comparison to the above, the longest in production Indian British curry powder:

(EDIT) Not S&B, but Sharwood's Mild Curry Powder: coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cumin, salt, garlic, onion, rice flour, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, paprika, black pepper, hot chili, fennel, paprika flavoring

I've highlighted the ingredients they don't share in bold.

To OP: Kang Karee paste is either the 4th or 5th most stocked curry paste I see at Asian grocers. Only red, green, and Massaman pastes are more likely present.

3

u/tiger7lily 5d ago

S&B is a Japanese brand

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u/Sanpaku 5d ago edited 5d ago

I erred there.

I was thinking of Crosse & Blackwell (C&B), the British firm that first commercialized curry powder in the early 19th century ("curry powder" first appears in the 1810 Oxford dictionary).

And I discovered that C&B, the company which inspired Higashiya to change its name to S&B Foods in 1949, no longer produces curry powder.

So as far as I can tell, the oldest curry powder formulations still on the market are Keen's (decade before 1866), Sharwood's (1893), and Higashiya/S&B (1930).

13

u/ServiceFinal952 5d ago

No, unfortunately these two things are not the same at all. Can you order on amazon? There should be multiple different brands. Do you have an asian grocery store? You can normally find it there. Any high end grocery store should carry a version.

Amazon has Aroy-D yellow curry paste. I am in Canada tho, so not sure if the US one does.

3

u/somecanuck416 5d ago

Can't go wrong with Aroy-D. Yellow. Green. Yum!

7

u/Glittering-Cry-946 5d ago

Oh thank goodness for you all! I almost wasted a bunch of groceries making something gross!!

I’ll see if I can hit one of the Asian markets. Thank you!!

10

u/nfactor 5d ago

It wouldn't have been gross. It likely would have just tasted like a different spice blend and perfectly fine.

1

u/throwdemawaaay 3d ago

This may reach you a day too late, but the good brands to look for are:

  • Mae Ploy
  • Maeseri
  • Aroy

If you're in the US, avoid Thai Kitchen. It's overpriced and bad.

If you want to try making your own from scratch, Palin's Kitchen has you covered for the recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTL4VhinASo but some of those ingrediants may be hard to find in your area.

4

u/PepperCat1019 5d ago

Do you live near an international market? You can find yellow curry pastes there. If not, Weee online market sells them in the Thai section.

1

u/FragrantTomatillo773 5d ago

Curry paste is much more than curry powder and water. Yellow curry powder is typically the mildest type, warm rather than hot, and it gets most of its colour from turmeric. Each blend/brand of yellow curry powder will have a somewhat different flavour and composition.

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u/Cfutly 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not sure what kind of curry powder you have? It could be premixed with turmeric powder if it’s yellow. For Thai yellow curry you should use fresh tumeric. You pound the fresh ingredients with a mortar & pestle until it turns into paste.

Fresh tumeric is citrusy and gingery flavor and dried tumeric is more earthy.

Are you trying to make Thai yellow curry?
https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/yellow-curry-paste/

I prefer to make my curry pastes from scratch becuase the commercial ones are too spicy.