Thai Chicken Soup with Noodles, Coconut, and Curry

Every time I make this soup I wonder why I don't make it more often. It's both creamy and light, and packed with so many of my favorite flavors like red curry and Thai spices. And, most importantly these days, it's only takes about 30 minutes to prepare, start to finish.

As with this recipe for 30-minute rotisserie chicken soup, one of the reasons this soup comes together so quickly is because it starts with pre-cooked chicken.

I originally developed the recipe as a way to use up leftover Tahini Grilled Chicken but quickly realized that any kind of pre-cooked or leftover chicken works perfectly. Three of my favorites:

1. Simple Roast Chicken
2. Lemon Rosemary Chicken
3. Sheet Pan Chicken

If you're the type of person who plans meals a few days in advance, plan to make some extra chicken one night just so you'll have leftovers for this soup. Or, simply pick up a rotisserie chicken at your local market and be done with it.

Recipe and Ingredient Notes

This soup gets its creaminess from coconut milk, a pantry staple at my house because of recipes I make on the regular like this soup, coconut chickpea curry, chicken adobo with coconut milk, and crispy coconut lime chicken.

In this recipe I prefer to use full-fat canned coconut milk which is less watery and more flavorful than the coconut milk sold in refrigerated cartons. The exception is the cartons of Thai Kitchen coconut milk that are often sold right next to the canned varieties, which is basically the same thing as the canned coconut milk just in different packaging.

You can also use coconut cream in this soup. But, because it's thicker and more concentrated than coconut milk, thin it out with some water. I find that ⅔ coconut cream and ⅓ water is just about right.

Whatever brand of coconut milk you choose, stay away from powdered or sweetened varieties. Both have their uses, but this soup isn't one of them. I usually use full-fat coconut milk to maximize all that creamy goodness, but you could use a reduced fat variety if you prefer.

Red Curry Paste is simply a blend of spices, shallot, garlic, and chilies, and generally available in the Asian foods section of most major grocery stores. It adds flavor to this Thai chicken soup, of course. But, it also adds tremendous depth and umami.

Like the coconut milk, I generally like Thai Kitchen's Red Curry Paste because it's spicy without going overboard.

This recipe also calls for Thai seasoning blend, which I know is kind of vague. But, here's the thing: Pretty much any Thai seasoning will work. Often, I mix up my own Thai Seasoning Blend, especially if I already have all the ingredients on hand.

At other times, when I'm feeling kinda lazy and just want to be eating a warm bowl of soup as soon as possible, I reach for a prepared blend. Most recently, I ordered Spice Hunter Thai Seasoning and thought the flavor mix was delicious.

How to serve this soup

Spoiler alert: the garnishments are where it's at.

I mean, this soup is perfectly delicious without any of the garnishments. But, it's much better with them.

A bit of fresh lime juice, a handful of scallions, roasted salty peanuts, fresh cilantro, and as much chili garlic sauce as you can handle add flavor, upon flavor, upon flavor.

If you're a fan of a good garnishment spread whereby you lay out the main dish and surround it by several flavor-packed toppings for everyone to garnish to their hearts content, check out this recipe for black bean soup with pickled onion and cilantro oil, vegetarian chili with pico de gallo and chimichurri, and this stupid-easy toss it together no-recipe recipe for white beans on toast with veggies and greens.

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If you give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment, rate it, or take a picture and tag it #alittleandalot on Instagram.