Restaurant-quality, easy Thai green curry prawn recipe with succulent king prawns cooked in spicy, aromatic Thai green curry sauce. One of the best Thai prawn curry with coconut milk recipes, you can whip up everything in 15 minutes.
Enjoy with a bowl of jasmine rice or rice noodles for a complete dinner! This homemade curry is loaded with more prawns, is creamier, and tastes much better than takeaway Thai prawn curry.
We enjoy Thai cuisine and love cooking alternatively with different varieties of meat, seafood, and vegetables. Easy Thai Red Prawn Curry and Thai Green Chicken Curry recipes are always a great hit in our family.
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You can serve the whole family with a minimum budget. All the ingredients used in this recipe can be easily bought at your local supermarkets and grocery stores, including the green curry paste.
15-Minute Thai Green Curry Prawn
Can you cook delicious Thai green curry with prawns in 15 minutes? Yes! If you use the ready-made Thai curry paste and ready-peeled and deveined prawns. 5 minutes for preparation and 10 minutes for cooking time. But if you want to create the green curry paste from scratch, you might need more time to make a paste using a mortar pestle or food processor.
Even though this is a quick and easy recipe, you will get a taste just like your favourite Thai restaurant, maybe better!
In this post, I’ve shared all my tips and instructions on how to make the most out of pre-made/canned green curry paste.
What’s in Green Curry Paste?
Authentic green curry paste is made of lemongrass, galangal, green chillies, garlic, shallots, coriander roots, kaffir lime, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and shrimp paste.
Traditionally, all of these spices and herbs are hand-pounded in a mortar and pestle into a thick textured paste. According to the family recipes, the amount of spices and herbs can be varied.
Green Thai curry is popular for its spiciness, vibrant green colour, and aromatic flavour from the fresh herbs and rich and creamy flavour of coconut milk. It’s a perfect combination of heat and freshness.
Essential Ingredients
You'll need a minimum of ingredients because this recipe uses ready-made Thai curry paste. Please scroll down to the recipe card for the detailed measurements.
Main Ingredients
- Prawns - peeled and deveined king prawns, tiger prawns, or a choice of raw prawns.
- Green curry paste - I used Mae Ploy green curry paste in this recipe; you can use any of your favourite green curry brands available at your local stores.
- Coconut milk - Using thick, full-cream coconut milk is recommended.
Vegetables and Seasonings
- Fish sauce: is a must-add ingredient for the savoury and saltiness of the dish.
- Brown sugar: palm sugar or regular white sugar can also be used.
- Bamboo shoots come tinned/canned and are available in most supermarkets and grocery stores.
- Thai basil: if you cannot get Thai basil, you can use Italian basil or omit it.
- Kaffir lime leaves: brings fresh citrus flavour. You can add Kaffier lime zest or regular lime zest as a substitute.
- Fresh red chillies
- Water
How to cook it
- Heat the pan to medium heat. Add half of the coconut milk, and reduce the coconut milk for 1-2 minutes or until the oil appears.
- Add green curry paste and stir it well for a few seconds until fragrant.
- Then, pour in water and the rest of the coconut milk.
- Season the dish with fish sauce and sugar.
- Stir in bamboo shoots and prawns. Cook for 1-2 minutes or until the prawns are cooked.
- Finish with kaffir lime leaves and fresh chillies.
- Make a taste test and add more salt or fish sauce if needed. Transfer to a serving plate and serve with plain rice or rice noodles.
Expert Tips
You don’t need any oil to cook green curry. It’s important to cook the curry paste with coconut milk instead of oil.
Reduce the coconut milk with medium heat to release the oil, and cook the curry paste with the coconut oil.
The right coconut milk is key to achieving the best creamy curry sauce. Do not use the thin coconut milk, which contains a lower percentage of coconut. Buy the thick, creamy coconut milk containing more coconut milk and less water.
Make sure to stir the coconut milk tin because the creamy top layer and the watery liquid should be mixed before adding to the curry.
Common Questions
How to make the curry sauce greener?
The green colour is from the fresh green chillies, Thai basil, coriander, makrut lime leaves, etc. Authentic Thai green curry sauce is yellowish-green and not green like a Grinch. You don't have to worry if your curry sauce is not green as long as it tastes great.
However, if you wish to make the curry sauce bright green, you can blend a handful of basil leaves or coriander with a splash of water or coconut milk. Then, pour it into the curry sauce just right before serving. You can adjust the colour by adding more or less.
What other vegetables can you add?
Round Thai eggplant/aubergine, courgette/zucchini, and bamboo shoots are popular choices. You can also add butternut squash, pumpkin, bell pepper, carrots, snow peas, green beans, baby corn, or a choice of vegetables.
How to keep the prawn soft in the curry?
Cook the curry sauce to your desired consistency before adding prawns/shrimp. Avoid overcooking, it takes only 2-3 minutes for the prawns to fully cook.
What to serve together with green Thai prawn curry?
Jasmine rice is a classic pairing for Thai green curry prawns with an additional garnish like fresh Thai basil, coriander/cilantro, fresh chillies, and lime wedges. Crisp cucumber salad, glass noodle salad, Tom Yum Soup, and Thai stir fry vegetables can also be served as sides.
Thin rice noodles are also an excellent choice. A warm bowl of Thai green curry noodles with prawns is irresistible!
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📖 Recipe
Thai Green Prawn Curry
Ingredients
- 400 grams Prawns/shrimp Peeled and deveined raw king prawns, or tiger prawns ( About 0.88lbs )
- 400 ml Coconut milk Full cream coconut milk, ( stir well before use )
- 4 tbsp Green curry paste Thai green curry paste, I used Mae Ploy curry paste.
- 100 ml Water Add more water if needed
- 100 grams Bamboo shoots Tinned or fresh
- handful Thai basil Or Italian basil
- 4-5 leaves Kaffir lime leaves Remove the stem part, Or 1tsp lime zest
- 1-2 Chilli pepper Or birdeye chilli
- 2 tbsp Fish sauce
- 1 tbsp Brown sugar Palm sugar or white sugar
Instructions
- Heat the pan to medium heat. Add half of the coconut milk, and reduce the coconut milk for 1-2 minutes or until the oil appears.
- Add green curry paste and stir it well for a few seconds until fragrant.
- Then pour in water and the rest of the coconut milk. Season the dish with fish sauce and sugar.
- Stir in bamboo shoots and prawns. Cook for 1-2 minutes or until the prawns are cooked.
- Finish with kaffir lime leaves and fresh chillies. Make a taste test and add more salt or fish sauce if needed.
- Transfer to a serving plate and serve with plain rice or rice noodles.
Notes
- How to enjoy this dish? Thai jasmine rice or rice noodles are typical pairings. You can also have it with egg noodles, wheat noodles, coconut rice, or fried rice.
- What type of green curry paste to use? I usually use Mae Ploy green curry paste, which is easy to get at our local supermarkets in the UK. It is made of lemongrass, green chilli, salt, galangal, shrimp paste, coriander seeds, cumin, kaffir lime zest, pepper, and turmeric.
- Instead of Mae Ploy, you can also use Maesri, Chef’s Choice, Lobo, Aroy-D or green curry paste.
- Is green curry very spicy? Yes, it is a spicy dish made of hot green chillies and spicers, rather than Thai red and yellow curry.
- How to reduce the spiciness? You can reduce the curry paste amount and omit fresh chillies.
- To keep the prawns/shrimp succulent and prevent them from overcooking, ensure the sauce reaches your desired consistency before adding prawns.
- Use full-cream coconut milk. Aroy-D and Chaokoh are my favourites in making Thai recipes.
- Do not recommend pre-cooked prawns for this recipe. Suggest using fresh or frozen raw prawns for the best flavour. Frozen prawns should be fully defrosted before cooking.
- This recipe is for 4 servings, and the nutritional facts are calculated approximately without rice. You can tap and adjust the serving size at the top of the recipe card.
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