Light Thai Yellow Curry in a Crockpot

I absolutely love Thai food.  LOVE it.  Especially yellow curry with chicken.  But we're cutting back on eating out, trying to save money and eat a healthy diet.    It was out of necessity, and an intense craving for a Thai fix, that I figured out this low calorie, insanely easy, incredibly delicious method for making yellow curry chicken at home.  In my crock pot.

Crockpot Light Thai Yellow Curry Recipe

• 1 T olive oil
• 60g yellow curry paste
• 2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
• 1 T brown sugar

I picked up this yellow curry paste at my local Asian supermarket, but if you don't have such a resource locally, it's easy to get some on Amazon.com.

One of the great things about this stuff is that you can toss it in the freezer and it'll keep pretty much forever, but it never gets rock hard, so you don't have to wait for it to thaw to measure out what you need.

The first step is to fry up the curry paste in a little bit of oil.  I used about 1 T of olive oil for this purpose.  I know this seems like a silly, useless step, but it really makes a huge difference in how the flavor turns out in the end.  Don't skip!  Fry/toast the paste of spices until it starts to turn golden and smells amazing.

This is pretty much just the recipe off the back of the curry paste container until now.  But here's where my adaptations start.  Traditionally, yellow curry is made with canned coconut milk.  Full fat.  A 1/3 cup size serving of that stuff is 140 calories, 14g of fat right there.  Even the light canned stuff is 50 calories and 4g fat for 1/3 cup.  But if you instead use the version of coconut milk you can find in a carton in the dairy case of your local grocery store, you can cut out a tremendous percentage of the calories in yellow curry.  The carton version of coconut milk is only 45 calories per cup.  Just be sure to get the unsweetened variety.  I even accidentally bought the unsweetened vanilla variety and used it in this recipe, and it was still absolutely amazing.

All the hard work is done at this point.  I just dump three large chicken breasts in the crock pot, add 2 cups of the coconut milk, 1 T of brown sugar, and the yellow curry paste.  Cook it on low all day, or on high for about 4 or 5 hours.

You'll be rewarded with an incredibly flavorful, light dinner just waiting for you when you lift the crock pot lid in the evening.

If you're looking for more delicious, easy slow cooker recipes, try these crockpot turkey wings, too.

By my calculations, a serving of this (about 1/2 a cup of the sauce) comes to 51 calories.  Five ounces of chicken breast adds 125 calories.    And I actually usually eat this with 1/2 a cup of quinoa (add another 120ish calories), but that was just all too beige for the photos.

Add a fresh green salad, and you have a truly fabulous meal for a busy night.  

Traditionally, yellow curry also has chunks of potatoes in it.  But I hate potatoes, and always pick them out when we order yellow curry, so I didn't figure out how to add them in my version.  A cursory internet search seems to indicate that the potatoes should be added about an hour before you want to eat.  If you try it with the potatoes, please let me know how it works out!