A mild, rich coconut milk curry using yellow curry paste (Entry TH-50) with chicken, potatoes, and onions — seasoned with fish sauce and palm sugar. Kaeng kari is among the most accessible of Thai curries and the one most frequently encountered outside Thailand in its adapted form. Thompson's treatment focuses on the authentic preparation — with sufficient paste to provide the turmeric and lemongrass character that commercial yellow curry pastes rarely deliver — and on the final seasoning balance that prevents the preparation from becoming merely a sweet, bland coconut sauce.
**The preparation:** 1. Crack coconut cream. Fry yellow curry paste 2–3 minutes. 2. Add chicken pieces (thigh, bone-in — the bone provides gelatin to the sauce during cooking). 3. Add thin coconut milk. Simmer 20 minutes. 4. Add potato chunks and onion wedges at 10 minutes. 5. Season: fish sauce, palm sugar. 6. The finished curry should taste deeply of the turmeric and lemongrass from the paste, with the sweet-creamy coconut carrying it. The heat is mild but present; the salt from the fish sauce is the critical balance against the coconut's natural sweetness. **Why it often fails outside Thailand:** Commercial yellow curry paste uses dried turmeric powder in insufficient quantity and provides a thin flavour profile. The potato absorbs the coconut milk's fat and starch during cooking, making the sauce thinner and less rich than it starts. Both problems are solved by making the paste fresh or using a paste of sufficient quality and quantity.
David Thompson, *Thai Food* (2002); *Thai Street Food* (2010)