Best Ever Tom Kha Gai Soup Recipe - Sticky Rice Thai Kitchen (2024)

Impress your mama in less than 30 minutes by making this delicious Thai coconut chicken soup! But let’s talk about eating food as medicine too shall we? While it is not a secret that this is one of the most popular Thai dishes that you can find in nearly every Thai restaurant overseas, it provides a lot of health benefits as well. I’d like to say that this is one of my yummy medicine!

Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Essential herbs in this dish

Yes the herbs in the dish are tough to chew unless you use the young and tender ones, but remember that similar to drinking herbal tea you still can enjoy some benefits from them. Also, I’d like to note to the Thai food fans that Tom Kha and Tom Yum soup use the very same main herbs!

Galangal or “Kha”

This herb is often is confused with ginger because both are roots. Galangal is however is lighter in color but more tough in texture. They also don’t taste the same. In Thailand, it is not hard to find the young galangal so you can chew on and eat it. For this reason, most restaurants will take it out of the soup for you before serving. However, when I slice them thin enough my American husband just eat the mature galangal in the soup without any issues. Galangal root is a rich source of antioxidants, helps to improve memory, lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Read more about Galangal’s health benefits from Realsimple.

Lemongrass

This herb may help prevent growth of bacteria and yeast. It stimulate the uterus and menstrual flow and just like galangal it is full of antioxidant properties hence you see some companies now make lemongrass tea for sale. Read more about the lemongrass benefits from Healthline.

Kaffir lime leaves or Makrut lime leaves

Makrut lime leaves release the essential oil which helps to reduce stress. It also promotes oral health and makes your hair smell nice and shiny. Well for the hair, I actually grew up using the juice from the Makrut lime fruit to wash my hair. To me the best shampoo for my hair is made of the Makrut lime! If you are still unsure about Makrut lime and its benefits, please check out the article from UScitrus.

Shallot

Shallots strengthen blood vessels as well as promoting heart and bones health. (Healthline) This one is not tough and you can definitely eat them unless you hate the plants from the onion families :). To me it provides the extra sweetness to the broth as well.

Recipe Notes:

1. Using a lot of vegetables in this soup meaning mushrooms and cabbage will give you enough sweetness without having to add any sugar. However, if you choose to use only mushrooms, you may need to add another 1 and a half table spoon of sugar in the soup. I intend to make this recipe healthy, yummy, and yielding more servings so I added green cabbage to it as well.
2. Mushrooms that are really good for this dish are oyster mushrooms, straw mushrooms, and sometimes the seafood mushrooms. I don’t recommend using the button mushrooms as it is actually the wrong texture for the dish. However, if you are used to eating it that way as many restaurants in the United States use them, you can go ahead and enjoy it that way.
3. Galangal or “Kha” is the most essential herb in the dish. If you can not find the fresh ones, you may use the dried ones. Here’s the link for it. https://amzn.to/3pNKg95 I normally buy the fresh ones from the Asian market, slice, and freeze them. They freeze will but I have also used the dried ones too.

Let’s get to the recipe! Also, feel free to post any questions that you may have regarding to the recipe. I’d love to hear from you.