Gordon Ramsay’s Malaysian chicken curry blitzes a fresh five-ingredient paste, then simmers chicken thighs in light coconut milk with lime leaves, cinnamon and star anise. Green beans go in at the end for bite. Start to finish it takes about 1 hour 15 minutes.
He cooked it on The F Word for two lads living on takeaways, to prove a proper curry at home beats anything delivered. His favourite part is the paste: make it at the start of the week and keep it in the fridge, “ready, like butter.”
The step everyone skips is the skim. After the long simmer, the paste’s oil rises to the surface, and he lifts it off before the beans go in. Thirty seconds of work, and it’s the difference between a clean, fragrant sauce and a greasy one.
Gordon Ramsay’s Malaysian Chicken Curry
Course: DinnersCuisine: MalaysianDifficulty: Easy4
servings15
minutes1
hour560
kcal1 hr 15 min
The F Word curry he taught two takeaway addicts to make themselves: a five-ingredient fresh paste, light coconut milk, whole spices, and green beans in at the death.
Ingredients
- For the curry paste:
5 garlic cloves, peeled
4-5 long red chillies, trimmed
2 lemongrass stalks, trimmed, outer leaves removed and sliced
5cm (2 in) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
4 shallots, peeled and chopped
- For the curry:
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ground turmeric
800g (1.75 lb) chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 onions, peeled and thinly sliced
4 kaffir lime leaves
1 cinnamon stick
3 star anise
400ml (14 fl oz) tin light coconut milk
100ml (7 tbsp) chicken stock
1 tsp palm sugar or brown sugar
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
400g (14 oz) fine green beans, trimmed
Small handful of coriander leaves, to serve
Directions
- Blitz the paste: Put the garlic, chillies, lemongrass, ginger and shallots in a food processor and whiz to a smooth paste, scraping down the sides a few times.
- Fry the paste: Heat the oil in a large heavy-based pan. Tip in the curry paste with the turmeric and stir over medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant.
- Soften the onions: Add the onions and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes until softened.
- Coat the chicken: Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, add to the pan, and stir to coat in the paste.
- Build the sauce: Add the lime leaves, cinnamon stick, star anise, coconut milk, stock, sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce. Bring to the boil.
- Simmer: Reduce to a gentle simmer and cook for 30 minutes to 1 hour until the chicken is tender.
- Skim and finish: Skim any excess oil off the surface. Add the green beans, cover, and cook for a few minutes until just tender. Scatter with coriander and serve with rice and roti.
Notes
- The simmer range is real: 30 minutes cooks it, the full hour makes the thighs fall apart. I go the full hour.
FAQs
Is this an authentic Malaysian chicken curry?
Honestly, no, and Malaysian home cooks have pointed this out about this exact recipe. Real Malaysian curries use dried chillies rather than fresh, and never soy sauce or fish sauce. Lime leaves only belong in Nyonya-style cooking. This is his weeknight version, built for speed.
Here’s what nobody points out though: his cookbook answer to that criticism exists. The Kapitan curry in his Great Escape Southeast Asia book is proper Nyonya, dried chillies, shrimp paste, no fish sauce, and he took it to an actual Malaysian cooking competition. More on that two questions down.
Can I use shop-bought Malaysian curry paste?
You can, and about 3 tablespoons replaces the fresh paste, but you lose the brightness that makes this curry worth cooking. Five ingredients in a food processor takes 4 minutes, and there’s no soaking, toasting or hunting for specialist items.
If the processor’s the obstacle, a pestle and mortar works in batches, which is how he offers it in the original and how his pork neck curry paste gets made on camera. Keep the whole spices separate either way, the cinnamon, star anise and lime leaves go into the pot, never the paste.
Bone-in or bite-size chicken?
Both are his. On the show he keeps the thighs whole and on the bone, because “I don’t want the chicken drying out,” while the written recipe cuts 800g into bite-size pieces. Bone-in wants the full hour, pieces are tender in 30 to 40 minutes.
Either way the green beans go in last, staying squeaky against everything soft. And on camera he lists the swaps himself: “you can finish it with spinach, you can put broccoli in there, you can put cauliflower in there,” even potatoes, his push to get the lads eating greener.
What is Gordon Ramsay’s Kapitan chicken curry?
His other Malaysian chicken curry, published in Great Escape Southeast Asia after he first ate it in Penang. Bone-in thighs and legs marinate in light and dark sweet soy, then simmer in coconut milk and tamarind. The paste underneath runs deeper: dried chillies, galangal, fresh turmeric root, shrimp paste and candlenuts, which he notes you can swap for macadamias, the closest match in flavour and oil content.
He rated it highly enough to serve at a Malaysian cooking competition alongside his nasi lemak, where an esteemed panel judged him second out of six. It’s richer and closer to what those Malaysian home cooks mean by the real thing, built on the same slow-paste logic as his beef massaman curry.
Is Malaysian chicken curry spicy?
Mild to medium as written, because the coconut milk and palm sugar round off the chilli heat. The 4 to 5 long red chillies sound alarming but they’re the mild sort, and deseeding them takes it gentle enough for kids.
If a genuinely mild curry night is the aim, his chicken korma recipe is the proper answer, nut paste and saffron instead of chillies. Going the other way, leave the seeds in and add one bird’s eye.
How long does Malaysian chicken curry keep?
Three days in the fridge, and it’s better on day two once the lemongrass and star anise settle into the sauce. The green beans dull from bright to olive as they sit, so if you’re cooking ahead deliberately, add fresh beans when you reheat.
It freezes for 2 months, though light coconut milk can separate on thawing, and a gentle stir over low heat brings it back. Give it a fresh skim when reheating too, and my roundup of his curry recipes shows where to go after this one.
