Maesri Tom Yum Paste - Authentic Thai Soup Base - Hot & Sour, 14 Ounce

Excellent product

This Maesri Tom Yum paste is sooo good and takes the place of going to the Asian store for ALL the necessary, unusual items needed for Tom Yum soup! I was truly surprised how GOOD and AUTHENTIC the paste was..and EASY! You add as much as you like and then freeze the remainder in its container. Delicious! Good as a rub on chicken, sea food, beef and pork.

Tom Yum and Tom Kha are my favorite soups in the world, but they are notoriously difficult to make well at home. Enter Maesri Tom Yum Paste. I admit I was a little skeptical about this. I LOVE all of Maesri's curry pastes, but this looked like it might just be a green curry paste with a different label...nope. It has significant difference in flavor that make for a perfect Tom Yum soup. Served at a dinner party and everyone was amazed. I felt like one of those folks on old commercials that had a "secret" ingredient. Folks even wanted to take home the leftovers. One caution. It takes a whole tub of this stuff to make a gallon of soup, and you are going to want a gallon of it once it's made, so you might want to buy a couple at a time.

Once opened , the paste is contained in a plastic pouch. You can then transfer it to the plastic enclosed container . I read a review of complaint of its bad packaging. It is indeed not! The paste needs to be contained in a plastic pouch during storage/ handling/ shipping . It is best packaged the way it is. Once received cut plastic bag and transfer to container. Now the taste: I find it not sour enough for me. This really is a just a base. I would recommend you adding tamarind powder etc my fav is Knorr tamarind powder available here at Amazon. The soup is easy to make. Start with a sauce pan. Pour water as you would like to the servings as you wish . For example myself , I put 4-6 cups of water in pan. Boil the water, add heaping tablespoons of paste in. Start with 2. Then add 1 teaspoon of tamarind powder . Add more if you wish to the desired sourness. Then add 2 stalks of celery, add 1-2 small Roma size tomatoes, then any veggies you wish such as mushrooms, egg plant, pineapple etc. I find the more veggies the better it taste because it add flavor to the end soup. Usually in the summer with plenty of veggies in the garden growing , I add things like snap peas, Asian egg plant, green or yellow bean( cut it up), cilantro, bean sprout etc . Then add your protein such as tofu, salmon , or shrimp, slices of pork if you’d like etc. If you want it spicy add a 1/2 -1 whole Thai chili or any chili sauce such as sambal oelek / chili garlic sauce etc. You will have a hot, savory and delicious soup! Not bad at all for an easy base to the Tom yum soup.

I guess this really applies to individual taste buds but I didnt really like this paste mixed with just water and heated up. In my opinion the balance was wrong so I read some reviews and added Tamirind Sauce it helped. After that I purchased some coconut milk powder and mixed the paste with that and the taste improved loads. You can add prawns but for a luchtime soup I added spinach cubes and you get a very delicious soup. You might love it just mixed with water it is very spicy that way with the coconut powder it balances the flavour.