Thai Chicken Curry Tacos

📋 Ingredients Notes

Here is a quick look at the ingredients in the recipe – it’s handy to use at the grocery store or as a summary of what you need. Skip to the recipe for quantities.

• chicken – Thin-sliced boneless, skinless chicken breast is a great time-saver. If you use regular boneless, skinless thighs or breasts, you’ll just need a couple of extra minutes to prep.
• oil – You’ll need both a high smoke point oil like vegetable, canola, or refined coconut oil, and sesame oil (optional but great).
• onion – You can use whatever onion you prefer.
• bell peppers
• ginger – I keep a jar of minced ginger in my refrigerator, and it is perfect for this application. Ground ginger isn’t a good substitution.
• garlic
• coconut milk – You’ll want canned unsweetened coconut milk found in the Asian foods section, not the non-dairy coconut milk in the refrigerated dairy section. Most of the time I use lite coconut milk, but for these curried tacos, I like full fat coconut milk. It’s thicker, and keeps the chicken mixture from getting runny and messy.
• Thai red curry paste – This Thai Kitchen red curry paste, and it is widely available in many markets in the international foods aisle. I have a fantastic Asian market, though, and typically use Mae Ploy red curry paste.
• fish sauce – Again Thai Kitchen fish sauce is widely available. I like Red Boat fish sauce. There are many other great brands at Asian specialty markets.
• sugar – Turbinado (raw, cane) is my preference, but brown sugar is a good substitute.
• lime
• mango salsa – My mango salsa is so quick and easy to make. However, there are some good commercial brand mango or other fruit salsas.
• tortillas – In a rare departure, I decided to go with flour tortillas like I did with my Irish tacos and Indian street tacos. The corn masa didn’t work well with the curry (to my palate). Also, the flour tortillas do a better job of holding the filling and staying intact.
• garnishes – I usually keep it simple. Lime wedges are really all you need. The salsa (likely) has cilantro, chiles, and scallions (my mango salsa does). You can certainly do more cilantro and/or basil, scallions, and offer more fish sauce!

🔪 Step-By-Step Instructions

• Sauté the chicken – Add oil to the sauté pan over medium-high heat. Sauté the chicken until some edges begin to brown. Remove from the pan. NOTE: This is blurry because of steam hitting my camera. Sorry! It doesn’t need to be cooked all the way through as it will simmer in the curry to finish.

• Sauté aromatics – Add a bit more oil if the pan is dry. Sauté onion until it begins to soften, then add ginger and garlic.

• Sauté the bell peppers – Add the bell peppers to the onions. Sauté until peppers start to soften.

• Make the red curry sauce – Whisk the coconut milk, Thai red curry paste, fish sauce, and lime juice and zest together.

• Finish the chicken curry – Add the chicken to the vegetables, then stir in the red curry sauce. Simmer gently (uncovered) until the sauce reduces slightly (about 10 minutes).

• While the chicken curry simmers, make the salsa, and any other toppings. Warm the tortillas by your preferred method. NOTE: I almost always do flour tortillas on a comal. Place them in a tortilla warmer until ready to assemble.
• Assemble the tacos, and enjoy!

❓FAQ

💡 Tips

If I’m using fresh ginger, I keep it frozen, scrape the skin, and grate it on a microplane. For quick weeknight meals, I often grab my jar of minced ginger.

Thin-sliced chicken breasts are great for shaving off a few minutes of prep.

Tacos can be almost anything flavorful folded up in a tortilla, right? And they’re (most of the time) super quick and easy to make. While I still love a more traditional taco, creating new fusion tacos is a lot of fun! I hope you’ll try these chicken curry tacos!