This New Year our family made a recipe resolution – a commitment to find new, good, healthy recipes to add to our repertoire.
Our meal criteria is that it has to be healthy and nutritious, but it absolutely has to taste good. We are a family of three busy, active folks, and recipes also have to be filling and give all of us the energy that we need to make it through our days. In our house, we are also focusing on trying to incorporate more veggies, more fish & seafood, and less poultry, pork and beef.
As I continue trial and error, I found a winner with two Skinnytaste.com recipes for Thai Coconut Red Curry Shrimp & Coconut Rice.
Now, don’t let the word “curry” scare you. When paired with the coconut milk, this is a very mild, creamy curry with just a little spice. It’s really, very yummy. And let me tell you the best thing about these recipes – they are super easy. Honestly, the most time consuming thing is peeling and deveining the shrimp.
I did make a few adjustments to the recipes – nothing major, so if you make them exactly as the recipe says, I’m sure it will still be wonderful. But, I made two easy recipes even easier.
I made the rice in my rice cooker. If you don’t have a rice cooker, get one. Seriously. They are not expensive, and a rice cooker makes cooking rice, quinoa, and steamed veggies SO easy. Pop the food into the cooker, turn it on, and then eat it when the machine beeps. Really, it’s just that easy.
Anyway – for the Coconut Rice recipe, I put EVERYTHING in the rice cooker, stirred it around, turned it on, and when it was done, I stirred/fluffed the rice again to evenly distribute the cilantro. I also tweaked the ingredients a little – we love jasmine rice, so I used regular/white jasmine rice. I also did not use the flaked coconut. I used minced garlic instead of mincing the cloves myself. And I used sliced ginger in water and then finely chopped it, instead of grating fresh ginger. I did, however, use fresh cilantro (it smells soooooo good when you chop it!).
Also, I doubled the recipe for the rice. We love rice.
For the Thai Coconut Red Curry Shrimp, I also made a couple of tweaks. I did not use the scallions. I didn’t have them, and I’m just not really crazy about them anyway. So, I left them out. Again, here, I used minced garlic instead of mincing the cloves myself. Otherwise, I followed the recipe directly.
I served the shrimp over the rice, and drizzled some of the sauce from the shrimp dish over the rice.
One addition that I would recommend to finish the dish is to serve with a slice of lime. I loved the way that the little bite from the citrus mixed with the wonderfully creaminess from the coconut milk.
For both of these recipes, you can find the specialty ingredients – the sliced ginger (it comes in a jar), along with the Thai Red Curry Paste, the Lite Coconut Milk, the Fish Sauce – in the asian section of the grocery store. I found all of these ingredients at my neighborhood Publix. No special trips necessary.
A note on the shrimp – and really all seafood – be aware of where it is from. Ask your grocer if it’s wild or farm-raised and ask where it comes from. Other countries may not have the same standards for their farm-raised fish & shrimp as we do here in the US, so I always try to choose wild shrimp from the USA.
I made the photos shown here – nothing super fancy, but I guarantee, if you put a nice salad with it and serve it to company, they will leave happy. But it was easy enough and good enough for me to make it just for the three of us twice in the past two weeks.
If you try it – let us know what you think! Enjoy!
Thai Coconut Red Curry Shrimp
from SkinnyTaste.com • Servings: 4 • Serving Size: 1/4th • Calories: 135 • Fat: 4.4 g • Protein: 18.5 g • Carb: 4.7 g • Fiber: 0.9 g
Ingredients:
- 1 tsp oil
- 4 scallions, whites and greens separated, chopped
- 1 tbsp Thai red curry paste
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 6 oz light coconut milk
- 2 tsp fish sauce
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
- salt to taste
Directions:
In a large nonstick skillet, heat oil on medium-high. Add scallion whites and red curry paste
Coconut Rice
from SkinnyTaste.com • Servings: 4 • Serving Size: 1/4th • Calories: 206 • Fat: 5.4 g • Protein: 3.1 g • Carb: 35.1 g • Fiber: 1.8 g • Sugar: 1.3 g • Sodium: 154.3 mg
Ingredients:
- 1 cup uncooked brown rice or jasmine rice
- 1 cup lite coconut milk
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1/4 tsp salt, or more to taste
- 2 tbsp sweetened grated coconut
- 3 tbsp cilantro
Directions:
In a medium sized heavy pot, add coconut milk, rice, water, ginger, garlic, salt and coconut; bring to a bowl over medium heat. Reduce heat to low, cover
and simmer until all liquid evaporates, about 40-45 minutes. Remove from heat, keep covered for 10 more minutes. Fluff with a fork; toss with cilantro.
