My refrigerator is a graveyard of half-used jars. Jams, condiments, spreads, pickles – you get the idea. Even so, there’s at least one personal favourite staple I like to keep around all the time: a jar of curry paste.

I’m such a fan of this flavour-packed convenience item, most often associated with Thai food, that I almost always have one jar in the fridge and another in the pantry waiting in the wings. Sometimes I’ll have two jars open at once, one green and one red.

“From a weeknight cooking perspective, adding a paste to your cooking will deliver a punch of flavour, saving you time and providing an excellent starting point for tweaking or amplifying the flavours,” cookbook author Hetty Lui McKinnon wrote recently in a newsletter for The Washington Post, where she sang the praises of curry paste and tomato paste.

Curry paste is widely available at supermarkets but you’ll come across a wider selection at Asian grocers. (Yes, curry pastes, even if supplemented with more herbs and spices, are common in Asian cuisines, including those not made from scratch.) Flavours and heat levels can vary significantly between red, green and other pastes, but functionally, they’re interchangeable. So feel free to swap in a different option than what your recipe calls for if you don’t mind changing up the flavour profile.

I’ll turn the floor over to McKinnon to share a bit more about curry paste.

“Made with pulverised aromatics, herbs and spices, Thai curry paste carries big flavours that can be utilised in dishes other than curries. I use it as a flavour base for a Thai-style baked risotto, and also like to add it to butternut squash [pumpkin] soup to quickly bring in more complex flavours,” she writes.

“There are several types of Thai curry pastes available, all with different combinations of herbs and spices ... As with all store-bought products, they will vary in flavour, saltiness and intensity, so try out different brands and consider this when seasoning your final dish.”

If you are vegan or vegetarian, read the labels of whatever you’re buying, as some brands contain seafood-based ingredients, such as shrimp paste or fish sauce. Chilli peppers, garlic, ginger/galangal, makrut lime, lemongrass, salt and spices are other typical ingredients. If you’re on a low-sodium diet, it’s worth comparing labels and being judicious in how much you use as well.

Also note: many of the jars or cans at the store are on the small side, meaning they don’t take up much room and, in many circumstances, you can use it up with just one or two, or maybe three, recipes. And that’s where I come in. Here are some tips and recipes for putting that curry paste to good use.

Curries

As McKinnon said, curry paste is a wonderful shortcut for improvised weeknight cooking, which is why I grabbed a jar for a quick and tasty, if not authentic, Thai-style chicken curry with rotisserie chicken (or tofu) and frozen vegetables. Briefly sautéing the curry paste in fat before adding the coconut milk makes a wonderful foundation for the dish. Just cook the paste until fragrant, minding any potential splatters. At most this takes a minute or two. With the basic template of curry paste + coconut milk + protein (raw or already cooked, adjusting the time as needed) + vegies (ditto), you can pull together a satisfying dish without a lot of effort. Just serve with rice to soak up all the flavourful liquid.

Soups

No surprise here given the overlap with curries, but curry paste is clutch for speedy soups, too. “I love how just a spoonful of this base of flavour can transform a pot of simple ingredients into something spectacular,” food writer Daniela Galarza wrote in her Washington Post newsletter. Galarza put that transformative power to work in a panang curry pumpkin noodle soup, supplementing the paste with several shallots, garlic and ginger, and filling out the broth with canned pumpkin (or butternut pumpkin) and long noodles. Again, this approach can be customised as it follows a similar track as a curry would, swapping in broth, and more of it, for the coconut milk. Dietitian Ellie Krieger makes a 30-minute silken tofu and spring vegetables in Thai curry broth with planks of tofu and piles of crisp raw vegetables on top of the vibrant red liquid.

Stir-fries

A dish doesn’t necessarily have to be saucy to benefit from a jolt of curry paste. Case in point: stir-fries. Instead of having to prep a bunch of other aromatics or build a sauce from scratch, scoop a dollop of curry paste into your wok or skillet, toasting it briefly in the oil, much as you would for a curry or soup. McKinnon makes a stir-fry curry with rice cakes using a generous 110g of paste, but you can experiment with different amounts depending on what brand you’re using or what you’re pairing it with. She employs a bit less (2 tablespoons) in her Thai curry-snow pea stir-fry, which gives more weight to the delicate flavour of the vegetables.

Tray bakes

Curry paste’s all-in-one flavour package makes it a good option any time you’re thinking of roasting proteins or vegetables, too. Because it’s fairly thick and potent, try cutting it with oil, citrus juice or liquid sweetener to balance the flavours and make it easier to spread or drizzle. Make a tray bake with Thai-seasoned roasted prawns with green beans, chilli, peanuts and herbs, with the seafood and vegetables coated in a blend of oil, lime juice, fish sauce, honey, ginger, curry paste and garlic. You can follow that lead for your own preferred ingredients for a quick tray bake meal. Or embolden roast chicken by applying a similar combination under and over the skin. Try a green curry cauliflower roast by creating a coconut-based sauce that’s poured over an entire head of the cruciferous veg. The sauce pulls double duty. First it helps the cauliflower steam and cook through when covered in foil. Then it flavours and burnishes the exterior once the head is uncovered and basted every 10 minutes for 30 minutes.

The Washington Post