Thai Green Curry Chili - only a partial success

OK, so I am on the right track with the idea and I think version 2.0 will nail it. It is good but not great. I started out with a crappy brand of curry paste and I didn't have enough, so then I added some of the right brand of red curry paste just to round out the flavor and I got very close to what I was looking for, just need to get the right brand and the right amount.

The second problem was the carbs came out way higher than I wanted. They clock in at 12 carbs per serving and only 4 of that is fiber, so even if you are counting net/active carbs you are still looking at 8 which works ok but I would like to see it much lower.

On the upside even with the 12 carbs it is around 109 calories per serving so I am very pleased with that.

So in MFP I played around with the formula a bit and if I remove the peas, the carrots, the white beans, and switch from sweet onions to a small regular onion and shallots, I think I can get it down to 64 calories per serving, 4 carbs/1 fiber (3 NET), 9 grams of protein for about 4 ounces of chili.

Current Recipe

1 lbs of ground turkey breast

1/2 cup of thai green curry paste

1 Cup of Oh So Delicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk

1 can of white beans

2 carrots diced

1 red pepper diced

1 green pepper diced

1 cup of peas

1 small bunch of basil

1 sweet onion

New proposed Recipe:

1 lbs of ground turkey breast

1/2 cup of thai green curry paste

1 Cup of Oh So Delicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk

1 red pepper diced

1 green pepper diced

1 small bunch of basil

1 medium onion

8 tbsp diced shallots

Do you pre-saute the onion to caramelize it?  Or does it all just meld together in the pot?  I didn't see any mention of oil, so that's why I'm asking.   Interesting recipe, though.  Is it very spicy after cooking and, presumably, reducing for a while?

I didn't really post the whole recipe just the ingredient list. I saute the meat and half the onion together along wtih salt, pepper, ginger powder, and white and black pepper. So yes I soften the onions but I wouldn't say carmelized.

The whole process is only about 20/25 mins so not a lot of reducing although the coconut milk reduces pretty fast. It has a fair amount of spice I would say somewhere between medium and hot, if I had used the brand of curry past I usually use (Mae Ploy) then it would have been hot. I added the juice from the beans to it so that thickened it but it also made it very bland, so next time I am leaving them out and will likely have to reduce it a bit more to thicken it.

just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pot

What brand of curry paste do you use? I love stuff really really hot, but if I used 1/2 cup, I'd probably kill myself. and all my taste buds. :)

and flavor is probably better if you used real coconut milk from a can. That carton stuff is full of additives and chemicals.

How about adding thai basil? and mushrooms to beef up the meatiness without adding too many carbs?

I typically use Mae Ploy but I got a late start yesterday and couldn't make it to the asian market and ended up using Thai Kitchen which is not very strong. The pot was fairly big so 1/2 cup worked out well. I started with 1/3 and worked up to get the flavor I was looking for. I will have to look at the carton stuff, I thought you were the one *****commended it to me. I prefer the canned coconut milk but I think it has lots of carbs, again I will have to look.

I added regular basil as I couldn't make it to the asian market and oddly the 3 or 4 I go to around me almost never have it.

I like the idea of mushrooms and I may try that, I was trying to stick more closely to my regular Thai green curry recipe and only added the beans to make it more chili like but they really didn't add to the dish in any way. I was hoping for fiber but white beans don't really have that much about half of black beans looks like. I guess I could try black beans but there are also a lot of starch carbs that come with beans too.

I eat a lot of thai food so I have built up a tolerance to heat, I can't handle Thai hot just yet, but usually order my stuff hot.

Yeah, Thai Kitchen kinda tastes like nothing. I've often added an entire jar to recipes just to get a semblance of flavor, whereas I only need a few tablespoons of Mae Ploy.

and I def. didn't recommend the carton stuff. It's way full of additives and chemicals. I buy stuff in a can that is only coconut and water. Nothing else, not even stabilizers or thickeners. The canned stuff does have more carbs (7g in half cup) and a lot of fat...but as someone who eats Paleo, I care little about that.

What about green beans? Like long beans often seen in Asian cuisine? Not as carby as reg. beans or peas...

That's a pretty good idea with the beans. I was thinking about trying broccoli slaw too just to add some fiber or maybe cabbage.

14 grams from a cup I could live with because it goes into a giant pot that gets split up into 4 oz portions, so that would not net out too bad. I will go back to that.

I don't care about fat, but I wanted to get something really low carb with this dish.

Here is what is in the unsweetened coconut milk I used. I didn't think it looked that bad, but I am also not all that sure what I am looking. What should I be looking out for here:

ORGANIC COCONUT MILK (ORGANIC COCONUT CREAM, WATER, GUAR GUM), CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, MAGNESIUM PHOSPHATE, CARRAGEENAN, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D-2, L-SELENOMETHIONINE (SELENIUM), ZINC OXIDE, FOLIC ACID, VITAMIN B-12.

I thought Guar Gum was pretty benign. I don't know what Calcium Phosphate, Magnesium Phosphate, Or Carrageenan, but everything else looked ok to me. Of course all the good sounding stuff (calcium, vitamin a and zinc have something else attached to it too like Palmitate and Oxide).

Guar gum is a thickerer...some deem it benign. It is in some canned coconut milks as well, but you can find brands without. It's the carrageenan that I avoid as it causes gut inflammation. My gut has enough issues and really doesn't need any help in the inflammation world.

But again, these are choices I've made *for me*. YMMV.