Panang Curry Paste (Prik Gaeng Phanaeng)

Red curry paste with roasted peanuts pounded into it, used to make a curry that is nearly dry.

Those two facts are the whole dish. The peanuts go into the PASTE, not on top — that is the split from massaman, where whole peanuts go into the finished curry. And panang is reduced hard until the sauce clings to the meat rather than pooling around it, with a visible slick of broken coconut oil on the surface and just enough sauce to coat.

Because there is so little liquid, the paste has nowhere to hide. A mediocre panang made with a weak commercial paste is obviously mediocre in a way a soupy green curry can disguise. It is the best test of a curry paste I know, which is why I would make this one first if you want to find out whether the tub in your fridge is any good.

Ingredients

Dried chilies

• 8-10 large dried red chilies, stemmed, seeded and soaked (fewer than a red paste — panang reads rich, not hot)

The pounding set

• 1 Tbsp coarse salt
• 2 stalks lemongrass, pale lower third, sliced thin across the grain
• 2 in / 5 cm galangal, sliced thin
• 8 cloves garlic
• 6 Thai shallots (or 3 regular), sliced
• 1 Tbsp coriander root, chopped
• 1 Tbsp makrut lime zest
• 1 tsp white peppercorns

Dry spices, toasted

• 1 Tbsp coriander seed
• 2 tsp cumin seed

The defining ingredient

• 1/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts, ground

Last in

• 1 Tbsp shrimp paste (kapi), toasted

Directions

Key ingredients

Fish Sauce · Black Pepper · Salt · Shrimp Paste

1. Soak the chilies 20-30 minutes in warm water and squeeze them properly dry.
2. Toast and grind the coriander and cumin. Panang carries a little more dry spice than a plain red paste, which is part of why it reads rounder.
3. Grind the peanuts separately, in a spice grinder or by pounding, to a coarse meal — not to butter. Some texture is correct.
4. Pound the paste in the usual order: salt, ground dry spices, chilies, then the fibrous group (lemongrass, galangal, makrut zest, coriander root, peppercorn), then garlic and shallot.
5. Work the ground peanuts in near the end, then the shrimp paste last. The peanut meal will make the paste noticeably richer and slightly gritty — that is right.
6. Cooking it — this is where panang differs. Crack the coconut cream and fry the paste 2-3 minutes as usual. Then add thinly sliced beef or chicken (sliced, not cubed) and only a little of the remaining coconut milk.
7. Reduce hard. Keep going well past the point where you would stop a red curry. You are looking for a sauce that coats the meat and a visible sheen of oil on top. If it looks like soup, it is not finished.
8. Season with fish sauce and palm sugar, and finish with a drizzle of thick coconut cream, very finely julienned makrut lime leaves and sliced red chili over the top. On a dish this concentrated those shredded leaves are not decoration — they are a significant part of the aroma.

Notes

About the name You will read that panang is named after Penang, the Malaysian island. That is the popular explanation and it may well be right, but I do not think it is established, and it is repeated far more confidently than the evidence supports. Competing accounts derive it from a word for “crossed” — describing how a whole chicken was traditionally trussed with its legs crossed for this dish — and others point at Khmer or Malay roots.

What is not in dispute: panang is a southern dish, from the part of Thailand nearest Malaysia, so a Malay connection of some kind is likely even if the usual etymology is not the right one.

Use it as a benchmark If you want to know how good a commercial paste actually is, make panang with it. There is almost no liquid to hide behind. A green curry with a cup of coconut milk in it will flatter nearly anything.

Peanut allergy Worth stating plainly because the peanuts are ground into the paste and are therefore invisible in the finished dish. Panang is not a curry to serve to an unknown guest without saying so.

Storing Fridge two weeks under oil, freezer six months in cubes. The peanut content means it goes rancid faster than the other pastes if left warm — freeze it if you are not using it inside a fortnight.