Help me reverse-engineer this excellent vegan curry soup

September 27, 2015 9:52 AM

A local Asian restaurant makes a truly outstanding curry noodle soup with tofu. I'd like to figure out how to make the soup myself.

The soup has yellow curry and some coconut milk in it. But the base of the soup is a hearty, savory broth. I don't know how to make this broth at home. I'm pretty sure that there is no meat and no soy sauce. The broth flavor is hard to describe, but it feels really rich and full. I get the sense that the soup would still taste pretty good even if you left out the curry flavor.

I tried making the soup myself a few months ago, but it turned out really flat and boring (sorry, I can't recall the exact recipe I used). Any suggestions on recipes, or even just pointers about how I might re-create this soup?

posted by akk2014 to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

Best answer: There's a recipe that sounds like this in Vegan Eats World: Curry Noodle Soup with Oyster Mushrooms. I haven't had this recipe, but I've had very good luck with that cookbook overall.
posted by Jeanne at 10:00 AM on September 27, 2015

My advice, as always, is to turn to Kenji Lopez-Alt. How to Make Great Vegan Soups, and Hearty Vegetable Stock (vegan) recipe, which uses kombu seaweed for the gelatinous silky feel of bone stock.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:05 AM on September 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Take one clove of garlic, one medium onion, chop fine with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, (or whatever oil you like,) then sautee, adding chopped celery, and cilantro. When this is sauteed well, then add tofu that has drained. Get that heated and crisped in the oil, then add curry spices or powder, and finely chopped, peeled ginger. (The curry and ginger make the pan stick, but the spice flavors are distribited in the oil.) briefly after the spice sautee add enough coconut milk or water to barely cover and 3 tablespoons of soy sauce. The soy sauce should only be enough to bring the broth barely to salt. Add in chopped, peeled potato to boil with the broth, tofu and vegetables. It takes seven minutes of steaming to cook potatoes, same for boiling, but to thicken the curry the potato has to break down. However after a few minutes you can take a few potato pieces out and blend them with the broth to make a thickening cream to go back in the dish. After every thing goes in, the heat should go from medium hot, to medium simmer, especialy after the potato cream goes in. You choose what other vegetables you want in it, carrots, peas, sprouts, legumes, water chestnuts, mushrooms. Every cuisine has specific items from local harvest.

Read up on yellow curries, find a powder you like or make your blend. Yellow ciurry usually has some tumeric, cumin, cinnamon, clove. There are many blends, from many localities. I love Vietnamese curry.
posted by Oyéah at 10:21 AM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is there a chance they're using fish sauce?
posted by amtho at 10:51 AM on September 27, 2015

Also - I'd love to know the restaurant's name :)
posted by amtho at 10:52 AM on September 27, 2015

Oh god. Sounds like you may have had a laksa. Where is this place? Tell me now! http://gu.com/p/2f65k?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
posted by firstdrop at 10:55 AM on September 27, 2015

I'm not sure the link in my first comment worked. Here it is again. Yotam Ottolenghi laksa recipe.
posted by firstdrop at 10:58 AM on September 27, 2015

Response by poster: @firstdrop: I don't think it was a laksa. It was simpler than that.

@amtho: No, no fish sauce. I know what that tastes like.
posted by akk2014 at 11:09 AM on September 27, 2015

Hm. There are many different types of curry noodle soups. And curry noodle soup is different than curry. The types most popular around this part of Asia are coconut-based laksa (of which there are a bunch of sub-variants) and curry mee (...which also has sub-variants). Here's a basic coconut-based laksa recipe. And this is a Penang curry mee recipe. That website has a bunch more different laksa and curry mee recipes. I can look for a few more reliable ones from other sources later.
posted by aielen at 11:10 AM on September 27, 2015

It might help if you could take a picture the next time you visit too. Or... you could just ask the staff for the name of the dish and its basic ingredients. I think Amazon sells instant laksa; you could buy a few packets to see if the taste is similar. This is a pretty reliable brand; it tastes pretty authentic (albeit basic). The type of laksa in that link is coconut-based Singapore(ish) laksa.
posted by aielen at 11:21 AM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Their secret ingredient is probably Accent. You can spend hours boiling mushrooms and seaweed like Kenji Lopez-Alt, or you can buy a can of MSG.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:26 AM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, mushrooms, kombu, and/or miso are how you get a deep, rich flavour in a vegan stock.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:05 PM on September 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

@aielen Those instant noodles look promising, but they're not vegan (they have dried shrimp in them).
posted by alex1965 at 1:18 PM on September 27, 2015

Hm. Are you absolutely sure the noodle soup is vegan? Or, do you want it to be vegan? Because I think the majority of laksas/curry mee aren't vegan in their native/original form. I've seen vegan versions of laksas/curry mee, but they're precisely that: vegan versions of dishes that weren't originally conceived of as (or known for being...) vegan. Like a veggie burger vs a hamburger.
If you're looking for a vegan curry noodle soup recipe, I'm guessing it's best to search for "vegan [insert name of curry noodle soup dish]".
posted by aielen at 2:00 PM on September 27, 2015

Sorry, omit potatoes and add noodles od choice. When I had a vegetarian place, I used miso to come halfway to "salt" and tamari to finish. Another nice addition to vegan stock is celery root. It makes a clear, almost green broth.
posted by Oyéah at 4:43 PM on September 27, 2015