Khua Kling Moo Sap
คั่วกลิ้งหมูสับ·(khua-kling moo-sap)
Sunday Heritage Simmers & Regional Thai Traditions
If you want to know what a Southern Thai grandmother cooks when she needs to clear the sinuses and feed the soul, this is it. Khua Kling isn't the creamy, coconut-heavy takeout curry you might be used to; it is fiercely spicy, completely dry, and deeply aromatic. The trick for an American kitchen on a Tuesday night is to buy a good commercial yellow curry paste, but wake it up with a dollop of real shrimp paste and a flurry of fresh, razor-thin herbs at the very end. You let the pork render in its own fat—no oil—tossing it endlessly until it resembles deeply toasted, spicy pebbles of flavor, best survived with a mountain of crisp, raw vegetables.
Before you start
Take the herb slicing seriously.
Thick chunks of raw lemongrass or kaffir lime leaf are fibrous and unchewable; take your time to slice them as close to paper-thin as humanly possible.
Ingredients
- ground pork1 lb
- Southern Thai yellow curry paste4 tbsp
- Thai shrimp paste1 tbsp
- water3 tbsp
- fish sauce1 tbsp
- sugar1/2 tsp
- kaffir lime leaves10 med
- lemongrass stalks2 med
- red Fresno chili1 med
Method
- 01
Render the pork in a dry wok using a splash of water.
Place a large, dry skillet or wok over medium heat without any oil. Add the ground pork and water, breaking the meat up into the smallest pieces possible as the water evaporates and the natural pork fat begins to sizzle.
- 02
Wake up the spices in the hot pork fat.
Push the meat to one side and add the curry and shrimp pastes directly to the center of the pan. Mash them into the rendered fat for thirty seconds to awaken the aromatics, then vigorously stir them into the pork until everything is uniformly coated.
- 03
Relentlessly dry-roast the curry.
Turn the heat to medium-low and cook for 8 to 12 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan constantly. The auditory cue is critical here; wait until the sound shifts from a wet simmer to a sharp sizzle and the meat looks like perfectly dry, deeply toasted pebbles.
- 04
Season the meat and flash off the liquid.
Sprinkle in the fish sauce and sugar, tossing vigorously for thirty seconds until the liquid flashes off entirely, then turn off the heat.
- 05
Fold in the fresh aromatics to finish.
Immediately fold in the hair-thin kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass rounds, and sliced chili. The residual heat of the meat will wilt the herbs and release a massive cloud of essential oils without cooking the life out of them.
Notes
Serve with a massive cooling platter of raw vegetables.
Because this dish contains no vegetables and aggressive heat, the canonical way to consume it is with steamed jasmine rice and a platter of crisp cucumbers, raw yardlong beans, and lettuce to put out the fire.
Adapting standard red curry paste.
If you cannot find Southern Thai yellow curry paste, you can substitute a high quality standard red curry paste and add 1/2 teaspoon of ground turmeric to approximate the Southern flavor profile.
From Cook Thai in America.