Geng Gari Gai (Aromatic Chicken Curry), by David Thompson. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe from Southern Thailand

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This old Southern Thailand geng gari gai aromatic chicken curry recipe “has a rich and delicious depth that only something rooted in the past can have,” according to chef David Thompson of Bangkok’s Nahm restaurant, who taught the Thai dish to participants at a culinary workshop held in Singapore as part of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards events.

On the morning of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards – in which chef David Thompson’s Nahm restaurant in Bangkok would be voted Asia’s best restaurant that year – I attended the culinary workshop cum cooking demo with just 11 other participants, spending a couple of hours with the chef, which allowed plenty of time to ask questions about the dishes and Thai curries more generally.

While I haven’t got this geng gari gai recipe from a cookbook, as I have the other Asian recipes that I’ve been making so far this year as part of our Year of Asian Cookbooks project, I thought this historic Thai recipe was a perfect candidate for the project for a few reasons.

The last recipe in our Year of Asian Cookbooks project was on the Northern Thai pork belly curry gaeng hang lay moo from Ian Kittichai’s Issaya Siamese Club cookbook.

Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe from Southern Thailand

The geng gari gai recipe from Southern Thailand is a ‘foreign’ curry, according to Thompson, meaning that it’s made using ingredients that fall outside the traditional ‘indigenous’ Thai curry paste traditions. In other words, it uses lots of dry spices of the kind that travelled with traders to Thailand centuries ago from Burma, India, Persia, and the Middle East.

“Foreign curries, coming from the Muslim south or over the border from Burma, still have the hallmarks of their origins,” chef Thompson explained. “Most traditional Thai curries have very few dried spices. Of course, they have dried chillies, but they do not have various things like coriander seeds or cumin seeds or cloves or other dry spices like that.”

The chef introduced this geng gari gai as a 120-year old recipe that he found intriguing because of the methods of preparation and marination. While Thompson says that there are versions that are both simpler and more complex, this one had “quite an unusual combination of techniques that suggest the past; a greater complexity.”

Geng Gari Gai (Aromatic Chicken Curry), by David Thompson. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

What the chef is talking about when it comes to the techniques used in preparing the dish is that, firstly, ingredients are prepared separately, such as the chillies for the curry paste – some are grilled and some soaked. The shallots for the curry are grilled first because, as Thompson explains, “grilling the shallots gives them, not surprisingly, a smoky, richer, more redolent taste.”

The second key difference is that the chicken in this version of geng gari gai is first marinated in fish sauce and then in curry paste for a few hours. Then all of the chicken meat and curry paste are cooked together in coconut milk.

“What intrigues me with this geng gari gai recipe is that normally you would poach the meat off in coconut milk, you’d skim off some of that cream that comes to the top, then you’d put it into another pot and fry off the curry paste before pouring it back in,” Thompson explains.

“This is the modern, conventional way of doing it,” he elaborates. “With this recipe the technique that I’m about to show you is one that’s original for this geng gari gai style of curry. It makes it slightly oilier and slightly richer.”

Tips to Making this Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe

I hope to be able to do a round up of tips for making curries from chef David Thompson but, for now, just a couple of tips to making this Southern Thai aromatic chicken curry recipe.

One specific recommendation from the chef for this geng gari gai recipe is to always season the curry in stages. The chef only put about half of the spices into the curry at first, gradually adding more spices as he felt they were needed.

Another tip when making this recipe that applies to all curry recipes, is to continually taste the curry during the cooking process.

“While I adore these older recipes, they’re not there as gospel,” he explained. “They’re used as a guideline and to bring them to the present you bring your own sense of taste to them as well.”

Note, if you are researching this dish, that various spellings are used, including gaeng gari gai, gaeng garee gai and kaeng kari kai among others. It translates as an aromatic chicken curry. Geng means curry in Thai and gari means aromatic (and is the word from which ‘cari’ or ‘curry’ came), while gai means chicken.

Also note: geng gari gai is often incorrectly called a Thai yellow curry, and very widely, too, in places such as Wikipedia, Serious Eats etc. Geng gari gai is most definitely not a Thai yellow curry. The direct translation of ‘yellow curry’ is geng leuang, which also comes from Southern Thailand and is yellow due to the inclusion of turmeric.

Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe

Geng Gari Gai (Aromatic Chicken Curry), by David Thompson. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe from Southern Thailand

AuthorTerence Carter via David Thompson
This recipe courtesy of Chef David Thompson of Nahm restaurant Bangkok was shared with the class during his workshop held as part of the 2014 Asia's 50 Best Restaurants Awards events in Singapore.
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 20 minutes
Course Main
Cuisine Thai
Servings made with recipe8 Servings
Calories 259 kcal

Ingredients
 
 

Geng Gari Curry Paste

  • 5 large dried red chillis - grilled
  • 3 small dried red chillis - grilled
  • 5 unpeeled red shallots - grilled, then peeled
  • 2 stalks lemongrass - sliced
  • 4 coriander roots - cleaned and chopped
  • 1 pinch whole white pepper
  • ½ tbsp toasted coriander seed - finely ground
  • ½ tsp toasted cumin seed

Chicken and Marinade

  • 2 Chicken legs - thigh & drumstick
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 4 tbsp geng gari curry paste

The Curry

  • 1 cup fresh coconut cream
  • 1 tsp turmeric powder
  • 1 tbsp toasted ground coriander seed
  • ¾ tbsp toasted ground cumin seed
  • pinch of toasted cloves
  • 6 red shallots
  • 1 tsp palm sugar
  • 2 –3 tablespoons fish sauce
  • additional coconut cream - for presentation
  • 1 –2 cups chicken stock
  • 2 medium/large ratte potatoes - simmered (optionally in chicken stock), peeled and cut into 2 cm cubes
  • 1 pandanus leaf - knotted
  • 1 3 cm piece cassia bark - toasted
  • 1 squeeze mandarin juice

To Finish

  • Deep fried shallots
  • Deep fried garlic

To Serve

Instructions
 

  • Cut the chicken leg into two through the thigh joint. If the pieces are large, cut each one in half again.
  • Marinate the chicken in the fish sauce for an hour and then mix in the curry paste and leave for a few hours.
  • Heat fresh coconut cream and then add marinated chicken and simmer gently along with most of the dried spices and turmeric.
  • When almost cooked (ours took around 40 minutes) add the shallots and simmer, seasoning with palm sugar and fish sauce. Simmer until it becomes quite oily and add extra coconut cream as required.
  • Add the chicken stock and simmer until the chicken is cooked. When the chicken is cooked add the potatoes, the pandanus and toasted cassia bark.
  • Check the seasoning. It should be rich, salty and lightly spiced.
  • With the seasoning correct, leave for 20 minutes in a warm place to let the spices ‘ripen’.
  • Reheat and check the seasoning. Adjust as necessary to taste.
  • Finish with a squeeze of mandarin, if using.

Nutrition

Calories: 259kcalCarbohydrates: 22gProtein: 10gFat: 16gSaturated Fat: 11gCholesterol: 30mgSodium: 419mgPotassium: 716mgFiber: 4gSugar: 7gVitamin A: 620IUVitamin C: 79mgCalcium: 63mgIron: 4.4mg

Please do let us know if you make this geng gari gai aromatic chicken curry recipe from Southern Thailand as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.

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AUTHOR BIO

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Terence Carter is an editorial food and travel photographer and infrequent travel writer with a love of photographing people, places and plates of food. After living in the Middle East for a dozen years, he settled in South-East Asia a dozen years ago with his wife, travel and food writer and sometime magazine editor Lara Dunston.

7 thoughts on “Geng Gari Gai Aromatic Chicken Curry Recipe from Southern Thailand”

  1. I was really able to lose myself in this curry. The fragrances in my kitchen are taking me on a little journey themselves.
    Lovely

  2. So pleased to hear that, Felicia – I love the way food makes us travel, whether it’s remembering where we first ate the dish or imagining how one day we’ll eat the dish in its place of origin.

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