This vibrant, verdant Coconut Curry Thai Meatball Soup just sings with springtime freshness. The gorgeously flavorful Thai-style green curry paste (which we’re buying from the store), pairing with fresh vegetables, flavorful aromatics, spicy chilis, and other tasty things just makes for one great bowl of noods.

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This is not an authentic Thai meatball soup recipe …

Really, it’s a way to honor the classic in a form that is approachable for a busy weeknight in an American kitchen. By that I mean, the ingredients list is accessible and the directions take less than 30 minutes to complete. I’m particularly smitten with the meatballs here, though they’re certainly not an authentic Thai thing. Rather, we’ll simmer some store-bought meatballs (because this is MKL and we really deal in easy and fast, okay?) We’ll take some help from our store and grab some pre-made meatballs and then roast them up hard and fast in the oven (my preferred way to cook meatballs).

They get dropped down into our bowls along with some noodles and are topped off with the lovely coconut curry broth. A sweet/savory mix of sweet sugar and salty soy sauce helps create such incredible flavor in every slurp of this soup, and while it may seem odd to you at first (the sugar) if you’ve never cooked many Thai or Southeast Asian recipes … just go with me on this one. We’ll end up in the MOST delicious destination.

Coconut Curry Thai Meatball Soup: FAQ’s

What is Green Curry Paste?

This is a store-bought item that is a TOTAL LIFESAVER and flavor turbo booster. Yes, Thai-style red and green curry pastes are some of my favorite pantry staple ingredients (I genuinely always have at least one jar) because they’re so stinkin tasty and making fresh curries and pastes is quite a labor of love. So, I’m grateful to the companies that have made it easy to enjoy many Thai and Southeast Asian inspired meals, thanks to the help of these wonderfully efficient pastes.

Now, you could use either red OR green curry paste in this recipe. Both would result in a tasty soup, absolutely. But they are not to be confused with one another. They’re built on totally different bones, you see. A green curry paste is made from well, greener things such as scallions, cilantro, green chiles, etc. Red curry pastes are typically made from red chilis, galangal, shrimp paste, and other wonderful things.

Why are we using sugar … in a soup?

Okay so. Much of Thai cuisine is about balance – striking the most delicious balance between sweet, savory, spicy, and even umami flavors. They do it brilliantly and yes, you will see sugar as a component in plenty of Thai and other Southeast Asian recipes. Though Thai food does tend to see a bit more sugar in its recipes, as opposed to say, Cambodian or Laotian cuisines.

In this particular recipe of mine -which honors the Thai flavors I love so much and gives a great way to utilize a store-bought green curry paste – the sugar brings out the flavors of everything around it. It amps up the coconutty flavor in the coconut milk and pushes back on the super saltiness of the soy sauce. It’s yummy, okay? To use my least favorite word … but’s it’s apt here. The secret’s in the sauce, as they say, or in this case – the broth. And the broth’s secret is just a spoonful of sugar. Yes, it helps it all go down.

How do you make Thai style meatballs?

I have never made authentic Thai meatballs, however I have enjoyed them in a bowl of noodle-ey soup not totally dissimilar to this one (thought I’m sure that one was much more involved and laborious in its execution). It is my understanding that traditional Thai meatballs are a real labor of love and even most people in Thailand don’t actually make their own from scratch on the regular. Rather, they purchase pre-made meatballs and just call it good. We here at MKL are HERE FOR THAT. Like, let’s just take help from our village when and where we can. I mean “village” figuratively here, of course. I live in Charleston, SC so I’m shopping at Publix, okay?

So anyway, my soup recipe today is a quick-fix, Publix shopper’s homage to the lovely Thai meatball. We’re simmering store-bought homestyle meatballs in a VERY flavorful Thai style soup broth, and in so doing, we’ll infuse them with flavor and make them better versions of their former selves.

You’re welcome, meatballs! Anyway, if you’d like to learn more about authentic Thai meatball making (Look chin moo), watch this video. She’s just wonderful.

Coconut Curry Thai Meatball Soup: What You’ll Need

This reads long-ish, kinda. But I swear this soup comes together in under 30 minutes and is weirdly fast to throw together. I actually kept thinking I’d forgotten something as I ran through my testing, because it just went so quickly. So fear not! It may look long to you, but this recipe is quite speedy to prepare and tastes like to took the whole live-long day.

INGREDIENTS

12 store-bought homestyle meatballs

2 tablespoons cooking oil

2 scallions, whites and green finely chopped and separated

8-ounces sliced mushrooms (any kind you like)

2 celery stalks, thinly sliced

2 large carrots, thinly sliced

1.5 tablespoons minced pickled jalapeno

Salt and pepper to taste

2.5 teaspoons ginger paste (or 2.5 teaspoons grated fresh ginger)

4 garlic cloves, grated or minced

1 tablespoon sugar

3 teaspoons fish sauce

¼ cup soy sauce

1 jar Thai-style green curry paste

15-ounce can coconut milk (full fat)

32-ounce box chicken stock

8 to 9 ounce package rice noodles

SERVING SUGGESTIONS: fresh cilantro, chopped scallion greens, chopped honey roasted peanuts

How to make this Coconut Curry Thai Meatball Soup

We’ll roast up some store-bought meatballs. Make a super flavorful, Thai-style broth, and then boil some rice noodles Put it all together and what do you got? The greatest soup to happen to your weeknight in quite sometime, y’all.

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