I associate soup with colder months, but I guess that’s relative since I live in South Florida. It’s regularly 80°F+ here, and we really don’t have seasons. I think seasons are more of a habit from growing up slightly further north. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s hot, but I’m still in the mood for soup for some reason. My internal clock must be out of whack, but I’m going to roll with it and make this Northern-Style Vegan Thai Coconut Soup. It sounds like something I would enjoy, and I’m hoping it’s a little lighter without the meat. Let’s find out!
This Northern-Style Vegan Thai Coconut Soup is a take on one of my favorite Thai soups: Khao Soi. This version is made vegan and gluten-free by using vegetable broth and replacing the traditional egg noodles with rice noodles.
The Ingredients
Thai food isn’t unusual, but it might sound like the ingredients would be difficult to find. Surprise, they weren’t! My usual grocery store had everything, including the red curry paste and rice noodles.
The rest of the items were a mix of pantry staples (at least for me) and other equally easy-to-find ingredients. Although I had the soy sauce, vegetable oil, garlic, turmeric, and curry powder, they were all sourced from my regular grocery store.
The Process
I’ve been getting into the habit of prepping my ingredients before I begin cooking, and that’s the approach I took with this recipe. I did make a slight change, though, by putting a large pot of water on to boil as I did the other prep work. That way the water for the rice noodles was ready by the time I was simmering the soup.
The rest of the prep work used basic cooking skills like chopping and measuring. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was how to handle the ginger. The recipe calls for a 1-inch cube of ginger, but it doesn’t say to chop or grate it. I chose to peel and finely chop it.
Once everything was measured and chopped, I began cooking in a 5-quart Dutch oven. It was plenty big enough for the soup even with the rice noodles added at the end. In fact, I think it could have held a double batch of this soup.
Making this recipe went just as the instructions said, and I didn’t have any difficulties. And since the water for the rice noodles was already boiling, all I had to do was add the noodles and wait five minutes for them to be done.
My time for this recipe was really close to the 30 minutes listed, with an extra couple of minutes making the soup. I think that was because I was busy draining the noodles when the soup finished. Not a big deal in my book. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 10 minutes to prep
- 22 minutes to cook
- 32 minutes total
