There’s no shame in using store-bought curry paste to jump-start an easy and delicious meal prep that feeds you all week

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Time: 3/5
One and done in an hour.

Effort: 3/5
Let the store bought curry paste do all the heavy lifting.

Cook Smarter, not Harder

I remember learning a lot about cooking during the early years of YouTube from watching tons of food content. But that content also gave me a quiet sense of shame from comparing my own food with content creators with professional kitchen backgrounds. Sure, I knew it was an unrealistic standard to hold myself to, but knowing isn’t the same as feeling.

Thankfully, over the years, I overcame this emotional speed bump. The resolution came from being clear about my goals as a home cook – put reasonably good food on the table for as little time and effort as I can, then go on with living my life outside of the kitchen. I’m not here to make a living, I’m just here to fill my stomach.

An integral part of that calculus is knowing what sort of ingredients are worth the effort. For example, I rarely go out for steak or pasta because we have steak and pasta at home. But after joining a Thai cooking class and learning how to make curry paste by hand, I now feel perfectly happy to just pick up a packet from the store. I know home-made is better, I just don’t want to put in the work.

Which brings me to this one pot Thai chicken curry meal prep, courtesy of the store bought curry paste. For vegetables I used eggplants which turned out to be a good match with the sauce, and some butternut squash which also played very nice with the spicy and savoury curry by adding some sweetness to round things out. As an added bonus, the vegetables can cook right in the curry along with the chicken, to keep this a true one-pot meal.

To top things off, I stirred in some Thai basil that I have growing on my windowsill next to the spring onions. Herbs are worth growing yourself, because they’re so much better when fresh but you never use enough of it at once to make use of the entire bunch you buy from the store. Keep the Thai basil plant around for other recipes like Taiwanese Three-cup Chicken, or a Thai Pad Krapao Moo.

Pretty food tastes better, so I do encourage you to put in the effort to garnish and make your meals look good. But whether or not you go the extra step, this is still a lot of tasty and nutritious food which I wouldn’t have even tried to make if it wasn’t for the leg-up that the store bought paste provided. No shame!

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0

Dramatis Personae

Served 5.

• 1kg boneless skin-on chicken thighs
• 800g butternut squash
• 400g eggplants
• 250ml coconut milk
• 50g red curry paste
• 1tbsp Fish sauce
• 4 tsp sugar
• A few sprigs of thai basil

Executive summary

1. Sear chicken thighs on both sides, and reserve.
2. In the meantime, wash and cut vegetables.
3. Sauté curry paste until aromatic, then add coconut milk and fish sauce.
4. Add chicken and vegetables to the pan. 
5. Stir to combine, then cover and simmer for about 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
6. Adjust seasoning, and serve with rice.

Play by Play

Searing the chicken in batches was the most time consuming step, believe it or not. There was plenty of time for me to wash and cut all the vegetables in parallel.

Afterwards, it’s a simple matter of blooming the curry paste in the pan drippings, adding coconut milk, and then everything else.

Always cover thick goopy sauces when you simmer them, to prevent it from splattering and turning your kitchen into a crime scene. Ask me how I know.

Here is when I taste and adjust for seasoning. Stews like this are one of the rare exceptions to my rule of always marinating meats overnight. The chicken is going to spend so long cooking in the sauce, and be completely coated in it, that there is plenty of time for flavour to penetrate.

Taan hai aroi! A fresh sprig of Thai basil really makes the colours pop, and the aroma from freshly picked herbs is hard to beat.

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