Curry paste is concentrated flavour: chilli, herbs and aromatics pounded into a thick paste. One or two tablespoons per dish is enough. Fry the paste briefly in oil or in the thick part of the coconut milk first — that is where the flavour is released — and then thin it out.

Thai

Thai pastes make up most of this category, from Mae Ploy, Cock Brand, Nittaya, Aroy-D, Lobo and X.O. The difference lies in the chilli and the herbs:

• Green curry — fresh green chilli, the hottest of the three classics, with plenty of basil.
• Red curry — dried red chilli, medium hot, the most versatile.
• Yellow curry and massaman — with turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom and clove; mild and almost Indian in character, massaman with peanuts and potato.
• Panang — thicker and sweeter than red, with peanut, for a dry curry.
• Nam ya and sour vegetable — the sour, fishy noodle curries you rarely see outside Thailand.
• Hunglay — Northern Thai, with tamarind and ginger, for pork.

Indian

Pataks and Mother's Recipe cover the Indian spectrum: korma mild and creamy, tikka masala tomato-rich, madras and rogan josh medium, vindaloo and extra hot the hottest. Tandoori is not a curry paste but a marinade for the oven or grill. Biryani and balti pastes belong to specific dishes.

Japanese

Japanese curry comes in blocks, not paste: S&B Golden Curry and Home Style from mild to extremely spicy. Dissolve a block in stock and you get a thick, sweet, almost syrupy sauce — a different world from Thai or Indian. For Korean curry powder see curry powder.

How much and how

Allow 1 to 2 tablespoons of paste per 400 ml coconut milk, for two to three people. Fry the paste for a minute first: unfried it stays harsh and flat. Fish or oyster sauce and a little palm sugar round off a Thai curry — salt and sweetness belong in it just as much as the chilli. An opened jar keeps for a few weeks in the fridge; you can also freeze it in portions.

Related

A bumbu does the same for Indonesian cooking. A spice paste is a single ingredient rather than a complete base. And a ready-made curry sauce only needs heating.

You will also need: coconut milk, fish sauce and rice.

Updated: November 2026