Veggies and Noodles with Thai Coconut Curry Sauce (Our Best Bites)

Aside from the sweet chili sauce, you should be able to find everything else at your average grocery store:

Linguine (be sure to buy the 16-oz. package and not the 12-oz. package), green onions, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, mushrooms, frozen (gasp!) veggies, red bell peppers, curry paste, and coconut milk. I sometimes get a little bewildered at the grocery store when recipes call for curry paste–what kind of curry? Indian? Thai? Green? Red? Powder? Paste? Sauce? Yeah, you get the picture. In this recipe, I used Thai Kitchen red curry paste, although you could totally use their green curry paste, too. It’s inexpensive and super easy to find. Problem solved, right?

Then you just cook the pasta, stir-fry the veggies, whisk together the sauce, and toss it all together! Super quick and easy–30 minutes, tops. If you want to add chicken or shrimp, just pop some on the grill, seasoned however you like them, and then slice the chicken before serving and add it to the noodles. Garnish with a sprinkling of black (or white, if you can’t find black) sesame seeds and a few limes for squeezing over the noodles before eating.

Heaven. In a bowl.

I will say that this recipe makes a ton and I would totally cut it in half except for the fact that I have very few uses for 1/2 of a can of coconut milk. Leftoverville, here we come. However, our reader Debs had a fabulous suggestion to freeze half of the coconut milk, which means you’d use a little more than 3/4 c. of coconut milk.

Veggies and Noodles with Thai Coconut Curry Sauce {aka Kate’s Noodles & Company Bangkok Curry Semi-Knockoff}

Recipe heavily adapted from The Colorado Connection

1 lb. linguine or rice noodles (if using rice noodles, soak in hot water for about 1/2 hour and then drain and rinse)

1 12-oz. package of frozen stir fry vegetables or 6 oz. frozen broccoli and 6 oz. frozen julienned carrots

1/2 c. green onions

1 medium red, orange, or yellow pepper, thinly sliced

1 c. sliced mushrooms

1 Tbsp. fresh, minced ginger

1 Tbsp. fresh, minced garlic

2-3 Tbsp. curry paste

Juice of 1 lime, plus more limes for garnish

2-3 Tbsp. olive oil

1 can of lite coconut milk

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

4-6 Tbsp. sweet chili sauce (available at Asian markets)

Black sesame seeds for garnish

Cook pasta according to the package directions. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the coconut milk, soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, curry paste, and lime juice. While the pasta is cooking, microwave the frozen vegetables according to the package directions, but only cook them for 1/2 the time–you still want them to be quite crunchy. If you’re using fresh veggies, blanch them in boiling water for 1-2 minutes or until they’re tender-crisp.

In a large non-stick skillet or wok, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the green onions, mushrooms, ginger, and garlic and cook until the mushrooms are tender and the garlic is fragrant. Be sure to continue stirring constantly to prevent the garlic from burning.

Add the sliced red peppers and the half-cooked (formerly frozen) vegetables. Stir fry for about 1 minute and then add the coconut milk mixture and cook until it begins to boil. Remove from heat and add the cooked noodles. Toss to combine and then allow the mixture to stand for 5 minutes. Toss again and serve with a sprinkling of black sesame seeds and 2 lime wedges per person (squeeze the lime juice over the noodles before eating). Serves 8 very generously, so if you can find an extra use for the other half of that can of coconut milk, I say go for it…:)