Coconut Chicken, Thai Flavours Without the Spice

If you like Thai flavours but you don’t appreciate the spicy heat of chilies, then this Coconut Chicken is for you!

Check out this video to see me make Coconut Chicken 🙂

We love to eat food from around the world and Thai food is one of our favourites. As newly weds, we travelled to Thailand and fell in love with the food there. It was incredibly tasty: sweet, salty, spicy, it had everything. We even took a Thai cooking lesson while we were there which was lots of fun! I still have the photocopied recipe book we were given 🙂

So, Thai food has a special place in our hearts and we enjoy cooking it for family and friends. Unfortunately, like many families, our children don’t enjoy spicy food. This lead me to develop this recipe for Coconut Chicken which gives us all the flavours we love: lemongrass, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, but it leaves the spice out. It also has the advantage of not needing a store bought curry paste which often contains many additives and is usually very spicy.

Ingredients Needed to Make Coconut Chicken

• 1 kg chicken breasts, skinless boneless chicken thighs, or cooked chicken, sliced
• 2 cans coconut milk
• 500 ml chicken stock (unsalted)
• 1 courgette, cut in half and sliced
• 225g green beans (frozen or fresh)
• 170g spinach
• 1 stem lemongrass, in 2cm pieces
• 4 dried kaffir lime leaves
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 2cm piece of ginger, sliced
• 1 small bunch coriander (cilanthro), chopped
• 60 ml fish sauce
• 1 tbsp honey, palm sugar or soft brown sugar
• White rice and a squeeze of lime to serve

Chicken

I often used skinless, boneless chicken thighs for this recipe as they do not dry out while cooking and they have good flavour. However, chicken breasts work very well too, although you do have to be careful not to overcook them. Another option is to used leftover chicken from a roast. This is a really good option as the meat already has a lot of flavour from being roasted. It also substantially reduces the amount of cooking and preparation, as the meat is already cut up and cooked and only requires reheating.

Coconut Milk

I try to buy as natural coconut milk as I can find. It often has additives which I try and avoid, so buying organic is a good option. It is possible to make your own coconut milk, although I have never tried it myself. Here is a good tutorial if you would like to try.

Chicken Stock

Homemade chicken stock has an incredible amount of health benefits, as well as being very tasty, so that is what I prefer to use. I have a great recipe for Chicken Bone Broth here. If you used stock cubes, try and find some that have the least amount of additives as possible. You should be aware that stock cubes contain a lot of salt which will affect the seasoning of the dish so make sure you taste before adding extra salt.

Vegetables

I like to use green vegetables for this recipe, and my favourites are green beans, courgettes and spinach. Other good options would be peas (add right at the end of cooking so that they don’t over cook), tomatoes, peppers or mushrooms.

Thai-Style Flavourings

When I am making Thai-style food, I like to use certain ingredients that really add that Thai flavour: lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, coriander. They are not exactly the ingredients that you would find in traditional Thai food, they are very difficult to get here, but they are similar and they do remind me of Thai flavours.

A couple of notes here…

• Kaffir lime leaves can be hard to come by, so you can leave them out but make sure to add a squeeze of lime before serving.
• I slice the ginger quite thickly so that my children can pick it out and not eat it. They find ginger too spicy to eat.
• It is a good idea to leave the lemon grass in quite large pieces too as it is not pleasant to eat.
• You can substitute fish sauce with soy sauce however, it does not have quite the same flavour. It is a good option if you have trouble sourcing fish sauce, or if you don’t appreciate it’s strong flavour.

Honey or Sugar

In traditional Thai food, they would use palm sugar. Unfortunately I cannot get that here so I substitute with honey or brown sugar just to add a bit of sweetness and balance the flavours.

How Do You Make Coconut Chicken?

This is another very simple recipe with just a few steps and no specialised equipment needed.

Pour the cans of coconut milk into a wok or saucepan and bring to the boil.

Slice the chicken (if using uncooked) and add it to the coconut milk. Bring back to the boil.

Add the fish sauce, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, sugar or honey, garlic and ginger.

When the coconut milk is boiling again, add the vegetables and chicken stock. (If using leftover chicken from a roast, add it at this point too.)

Bring back to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 10 mins (15 mins if using skinless, boneless chicken thighs). Taste and adjust seasoning by adding more fish sauce or salt to taste.

Check that everything is cooked through, add the chopped coriander and serve with plain white rice and a squeeze of lime.

Can I Freeze Coconut Chicken?

Yes! Coconut chicken makes a great freezer dinner. You can double the quantities and put half in the freezer for a tasty dinner on a busy night. Or, if you’re expecting guests, you can make it ahead of time and freeze it so that you can just warm it up when your guests are here and concentrate on enjoying their company.

Is Coconut Chicken Gluten and Dairy Free ?

Yes it is! And this is another reason why we make it so often in our family. The only ingredient you need to be careful of is soy sauce if you are using it as a substitute to fish sauce. Soy sauce is often made with wheat but you can buy gluten free soy sauce in some organic supermarkets.

So, why don’t you give Coconut Chicken a go and discover some Thai flavours without the spice ! Let me know what you think in the comments, I love to hear from you 🙂

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Are you looking for more homemade meal ideas? Find them here.

If you liked this recipe, you might also like Easy Chicken, Lemon and Courgette Tagine.