Tom Yum Soup with Prawns & Coconut Milk

Tom Yum Soup in a rush, 10 minutes prep and 10 minutes cooking and you have a bright vibrant spicy Thai prawn soup ready to go!

Thai Prawn Soup

I love Thai flavours, there is just something magical about the way they combine sweet, sour, salty, and of course spicy.

Unlike some of my previous That offerings like my beef massaman curry or my green chicken curry this recipe tom yum soup recipe is pure convenience.

It takes 10 minutes to prepare, 5 if you are in a hurry, and just 10 minutes to cook!

Most of the ingredients should be available from your local Asian store or even a well-stocked supermarket.

Even as a committed foodie, I purchase tom yum paste for this recipe although this works just as well with my Thai Red Curry paste.

Tom yum soup is not something I cook often enough to justify making the paste from scratch.

I vary from a classic tom yum soup by using coconut milk. Traditionally it would be made with evaporated milk.

I prefer my version feel free to try it with evap and let me know your thoughts.

Store Bought Tom Yum Paste

As with all store bought curry pastes your final dish will be very much defined by the paste that you purchase.

Most pastes will be founded on core tom yum ingredients. Lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves and a smoked chilli paste called nam prik pao.

The subtle smoked flavour of the chilli is another good reason to buy store bought. I can’t find nam prik pao anywhere!.

I usually use one of three brands. Lobo or Maesri are my usual go-to choice as they are readily available and pretty good.

The third is less readily available but it is the best that I have tried and that is Maepranom.

However, use whatever you can get and if needs be add more lemongrass, ginger or galangal and lime to get the balance where you want it to be.

Buying The Prawns.

Prawns appear here regularly in everything from curries like my Thai Red Prawn Curry and quick Indian prawn cuury to my squid ink pasta with prawns.

I live in landlocked Hungary and frozen prawns are the way to go for me. I love ’em so much that I will use whatever I can get my hands on.

These are made with some size 16-20 head off shell on raw frozen prawns. The number always refers to how many prawns there are per pound.

I always defrost prawns before cooking them and typically do it in a rush by running them under cold water.

You can use “blanched” or precooked prawns and I do regularly. But you need to add them in right at the end of the process.

Essentially just throw them in with the coconut milk for the last 2 minutes.