While the more complicated recipes take a little more time than I’m willing to spend, I have found a few dishes that don’t require too much effort. They are all tasty enough to give us our Thai food fix, and affordable enough to work into the budget on a regular basis.

Pork with extra thin green beans.
I think this recipe tastes more like the restaurant version I remember without the oyster sauce, sugar and salt. Of course it also has way less sodium that way, which makes it healthier as well. It works great with ground beef, shrimp or bay scallops as well. Pop a side of jasmine rice in the rice cooker, and you’ve got a tasty entree in less than thirty minutes.

Spicy ground beef with raw cabbage and vegetables
This dish is definitely full on flavor and light on calories, particularly if you use the extra lean ground beef in your recipe. Since the vegetables are raw, you can serve this dish chilled or warm which makes it perfect for year round entertaining.

Thai coconut chicken with snow peas
This recipe is fairly simple with a reasonable number of ingredients. It tastes amazing over jasmine rice and uses one of my favorite convenience vegetables, snow peas. The inclusion of coconut milk really rounds out the flavor.

Green curry with snow peas and shrimp
No shortage of flavor with this dish, and you can use store bought green curry paste to speed things up. Serve over jasmine rice with ice cold Singha. Swap out shrimp for bay scallops as a variation.

Tom Kha Gai soup
This is one of my all time favorite soups. I frequently order at least a cup of it as an appetizer when we go out for Thai food while on the road. Rather than being seafood based, chicken breast and mushrooms take the lead as ingredients in this soothing dish.

Pad Thai
Available inexpensively on every street corner in-country, my husband and I can both eat this dish for long stretches of time without getting bored. Just get yourself some dried rice noodles to cold soak for two hours, use some precooked chopped chicken or shrimp, precooked scrambled eggs (broken up), pad Thai sauce, water and sides of chopped scallions, raw sugar, ground peanuts and red pepper powder. Stir fry non-side ingredients (only about a third of a large jar of sauce) to heat and mix through. Serve using chopsticks and top with desired amounts of side items. Use sprouts as well and possibly full plain peanuts in the heated mixture, if desired. One of these days, I’ll be trying to make my own sauce. Here’s the simplest looking recipe I’ve found for it so far.

For other affordable Thai recipes, try coconut lime soup with scallops, lemongrass soup with shrimp or three ingredient curry. I’ve also recently written an article on low fat Thai shrimp toast you can make in your toaster oven. That’s nine different recipes to enjoy the flavor of Thailand at home affordably.

Photo Credit: Adactio

Jonesing for Thai food? Curtailing your restaurant budget so you can actually take a trip the country? Here’s a simple, three ingredient recipe you can use to enjoy the flavor of Thailand over a humble bowl of rice. Read on.

Making Thai food from scratch for the first time can be intimidating. Longer lists of ingredients, not knowing which spices you can go heavier or lighter on and finding a well-stocked Asian market are on the list of challenges. This recipe will help you bust out of the culinary starting gate with success.

What you need: 2-5 cans of coconut milk from the grocery store, 1-2 boneless chicken breasts (diced), 1-3 tablespoons of your favorite Mae Ploy curry paste.

What to do: Put all three ingredients in a slow cooker while you are at work, and put some rice in the rice cooker when you get home. Serve the slow-cooked mixture over the rice.

Variations: 1. Add chopped carrots and onions, broccoli, or other vegetables to the slow cooker mixture.  2. Add cubed potatoes and skip the rice. (This makes for faster eating time when you arrive home, and also for easier cleanup.) 3. Make it vegan by going with vegetables only in the curry. Decide for yourself if you want to include potatoes as the starch and skip the rice for a vegan, easily cleaned up meal.

Related Recipe: Easy, low fat Thai shrimp toast.

Don’t forget the ice cold Singha!

Photo Credit: Gaetan Lee