I’m obsessed with eating Thai food lately. This isn’t bad for our budget since we can get Thai food pretty cheap, but it’s not great for counting calories.
Here’s my progression of making Thai food (in this case Thai Green Curry) work with counting calories and losing weight:
1) No knowledge or care. In this stage Thai food was consumed with abandon and pure joy! Eaten without regards to calories or portions because IT IS SO GOOD.
2) Measuring portions. In this stage Thai food was still consumed from restaurants but a measuring cup was used to better measure out portions and achieve a better calorie estimate. Still delicious.
3) Using pre-made ingredients at home. I’ve moved into this stage now. Last night I made noodles, veggies and chicken and added a canned Thai green curry sauce. It wasn’t the best I’ve had but adding fresh ground chilli made it better and enjoyable. Also, super easy to calorie count.
4) Made at home AND healthy + delicious. This is the stage I’m moving into next. I will be buying Thai green curry paste and light coconut milk on my next grocery shopping trip. Then I’ll experiment with those ingredients until I learn how to make a dish that tastes great without as many calories as all the previous steps.
I also eat other Thai dishes but this is probably my favorite and the one I thought might be easiest for me to recreate at home.
It’s interesting to type out the progression because I’ve done this with lots of other foods so far and it’s a great way to save both money and calories. I’m thinking with some trial and error I’ll be able to find a happy substitution for eating at home with healthier ingredients like light coconut milk and maybe brown rice. We’ll see after some experimenting and looking up recipes online.
I won’t be saying goodbye to Thai food takeout or meals at restaurants though… they just won’t be as frequent. I’m also quite excited to expand my cooking skills into Asian territory. Exciting!
I hope you post about your future Thai cooking endeavors.
I definitely will. I’m super excited about learning some new things. :)
Hi Mary,
This sounds fun! We have been making Thai curry at home for years and love it! My faves are Green Curry made with green curry paste, coconut cream, 1tsp brown sugar, 1tsp fish sauce, chicken and carrots and broccoli. It really is so easy! Chicken thigh I find is the best as it stays tender. Another fave is the same but using red curry paste and kumara and red capsicum instead of the brocolli and carrot. If you want to reduce your calories even further, you can try it with cauliflower ‘rice’ which is basically blitzed cauliflower florets, which you then cook until tender. Yummo!
That sounds delicious Alex!! It does sound easy now that I’ve looked at recipes and instructions. I can’t wait to try it.
I’ve heard of cauliflower rice before but have yet to try it. I’m really not opposed to eating rice honestly. It fits in my calories since I don’t eat a ton of it. I guess the only problem I have is the time it takes to cook rice but cauliflower would probably take quite a while too.
I love thai too! I got a little sick of it since my best friend’s boyfriend always picks it for when we eat out 9 1/2 times out of ten, but it’s still one of my fav’s. If you come up with a tasty recipe, post it up! whenever I try cooking coconut milk type dinner recipes, they tend to come out a bit bland. I’m still working on that.
I’m addicted to Thai. My favorite dish right now is from health-bent.com – their Zucchini Pad Thai Recipe is SO good! and easy!
Sounds amazing. I’ll check out that site for recipes.
What a great progression! I love cooking adventures, and you’re right, they save calories and $. It’s been a while since I made Pad Thai, but I do make my own Indian food now. Next up for me in this category is Japanese/sushi.
I really want to start making Thai at home – I just have no confidence in my abilities! I like your progression =D
I have been a long time lurker, but wanted to say that I love cooking Thai green curry and I have found that making my own paste can be really easy. Plus, it allows you to amp up the spicy factor as much as you want.
http://thaifood.about.com/od/thairecipes/r/greencurrychick.htm
I often don’t add the lemongrass or shrimp paste since they are hard to find where I live. Also, I tend to add some curry powder and sometimes substitute soy sauce for fish sauce. It may seem daunting, but it’s super easy once you get the hang of it and you can have fun mixing up the veggies and protein (I even made one with lentils last night).
Have always enjoyed reading your blog, keep up the good work!
I’m not a Thai food fan BUT I do love this one recipe I did trying to recreate Trader Joe’s Thai Lime Rice. Get some brown rice, light coconut milk, lemongrass, lime zest, basil and onion powder. Soooo good!
Learning to cook curries is super easy and fun… I made all my own pastes and I love it! And it is super cheap if you head to an Indian spice shop to pick up your ingredients. (like 10c per spice, and I buy enough for 10-15 currys per trip)
Curry paste in a jar is awesome – I have red thai curry paste that I add to fish etc just as flavour or stir into fish cake mixtures (Thai fish cakes!)
However…I actually use full fat coconut cream – Ayam brand – because most brands of coconut milk and cream have a concerning number of additives. I am a firm believer that coconut milk or cream should only have one or two ingredients: Coconut (cream) or Coconut & water (milk).
Coconut cream can be a good choice because you need so little of it to get the flavour you’re after….. and you can always water it down. Ayam comes in small 270ml cans so one can of cream can be watered down to make as much or more than a full size can of another brand. Ayam also do some light options and organic as well but you don’t see them as often in NZ supermarkets (or at least Pak n Save where I shop!).
One of those annoying dieting things I guess where sometimes the lowest fat version of a product might not be the best version for your overall health! You can also look at the Carnation Evaporated Milk – Coconut flavour – which advertise themselves as 92% lower saturated fat than coconut cream.
ha sorry for the rant, I am obsessed with the chemicals in coconut creams/milks at the moment! Once I started looking at the backs of the cans it became my favourite topic.
Thank you for the rant this was actually really helpful! I hadn’t had a chance to hit the store and check the labels on all the coconut products so you just saved me some work. :)
I hear you–I *love* Thai food, especially curries, and they’re not always the healthiest choice. So I love the suggestion of the measuring cups–I’m also a fan of doing “lunch” portions when I can, since they’re usually smaller, but I’m also interested in trying to cook more at home & ideally trying it with my own sauces (I’m using jarred for now but I want to expand my cooking!).
I haven’t tried this recipe yet, but I’ve done others of hers & they have all been fabulous (bonus: she gives the calorie breakdowns!), so it might be worth a try: http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/10/thai-green-coconut-curry-shrimp-with.html#more
Thai food is delicious! It’s hard for me to maintain portion control so I put it in little Rubbermaid containers measured out per- portion. Good info, I’ll be monitoring your blog from here on out! Keep it rolling!