This Easy Thai Green Chicken Curry Is So Good, You’ll Never Order Takeaway Again

When your dinner guests pause mid-bite and declare it the best Thai green chicken curry they’ve ever tasted, you know you’re onto something special. This recipe was born from a hands-on Thai cooking class on the island of Koh Samui, an unforgettable travel moment that delivered more than just beautiful beaches. It captured the heart of Thai cuisine in one fragrant, creamy, and utterly irresistible dish. Now you can recreate that magic at home with this easy, flavour-packed recipe.

Making Easy Thai Green Chicken Curry

After the noisy Thai cooking class, a strange silence fell over the group at Intercontinental Koh Samui Resort as we greedily tucked into the meal that had just been ingredients moments before. It was good, very good – a rich mix of spicy coconut sauce around tender chicken and chunks of eggplant.

Five of us, a mixed bag of culinary skills, attempted the recipe under Chef Teo’s watchful eye. He taught us how to chop vegetables Thai style and develop the flavours according to taste. The results spoke for themselves, and while I would love to claim it was because of my expert cooking style, I think the freshly milked coconut and organic chicken straight from the market can take much of the credit.

This chef experience Thai cooking class starts with a Thai market tour. Photo: Kerry Heaney

This chef experience Thai cooking class starts at the market

The first step for any cooking project is to purchase the ingredients, so Chef Teo gathered us up for a short van ride to the local village market where tables of fresh produce awaited selection.

The market is busy in the morning as people pop in for breakfast or to buy their lunch for later. All the produce is freshly picked, processed or cooked because according to the chef, the locals won’t buy it any other way.

Low tech but effective fly control at the Thai food market. Photo: Kerry Heaney

Thai market tour on Koh Samui

Fresh meat sits out in the open on a layer of ice to keep it chilled while fans tied with shredded plastic bags whirl overhead to keep flies away. It’s low tech but effective solution.

Chef found an organic chicken, a yellow coloured bird which contrasted sharply with the pale white chicken beside it, and declared it perfect for our easy Thai Green Chicken Curry

“This is local,” says Chef Teo, “and just killed this morning otherwise no one would buy it. These birds get more exercise and are leaner, but the flavour is much better.”

Surrounding the chicken were other bird parts including feet, livers and an oval of coagulated blood. I didn’t know chickens had that much blood!

Around the corner, there were small plastic bags filled with freshly made Thai Green Curry paste.  Chef grabbed one of these too!

Chef inspects the daily catch before buying. Photo: Kerry Heaney

Organic food is expensive anywhere

Even though this was a market in Thailand, the price was not low. Chef paid about $30 AUS for the bird, which is similar to what I have paid for organic chicken from a market at Noosa.

At the fishmonger’s stall, Chef Teo inspected the large, locally caught calamari to ensure they were firm, not soft. Soft calamari is not as fresh. The vibrant red fish, giant prawns and bugs that also piled into the bag were destined for our dinner.

While the chef was busy buying Thai Green Curry ingredients, I spotted my favourite Asian fruit, mangosteen.  This luscious fruit is nothing like a mango, but more like a segmented lychee with soft sweet-sour flesh segments around a seed.  You peel off the hard purple shell to reveal the fruit inside.

Found my favourite fruit – mangosteen!

Chef experience Thai Cooking class

The Intercontinental Koh Samui Resort offers a chef experience Thai cooking class for guests to learn Thai cooking techniques in the hotel’s kitchen, finishing with lunch in Amber Restaurant.

There were two dishes on the menu, a Thai Beef Salad and Thai Green Curry. There was too much onion in the salad for me but the curry, well that took five people to another level. Here is the recipe.

Where is Intercontinental Koh Samui Resort?

I travelled from Brisbane, Australia to Bangkok with AirAsia.   The newish flight route takes just over eight hours and leaves Brisbane at 12.50 pm and arrives at 7.10 Bangkok time.  This is too late to get a connecting flight to Koh Samui but offers a great opportunity to explore Bangkok.  I recommend adding a Value Pack to your airfare which gives you the choice to select the airline’s Quiet Zone.

The night in Bangkok was spent at the award-winning Indigo Wireless Hotel, a contemporary high-rise boutique hotel in the Lumphini embassy neighbourhood.  The high-end rooms feature quirky retro décor and come with free-wifi, rainfall showers. My corner room had a balcony and wrap-around views of Bangkok.  Rates start at $200 per night.

The next day I boarded a Bangkok Air flight to Koh Samui followed by a 40-minute drive to the upscale and award-winning Intercontinental Koh Samui Resort set along Taling Ngam Bay on the Gulf of Thailand. The views from the resort across the famous Five Islands and Angthong National Park are superb.

The Thai Cooking Class is one of the many activities offered at the resort.  You can also go searching for pink dolphins (true) or relax at the spa, which I did, but that’s another story.

I stayed in one of the resort’s Classic Rooms in the main building. A spacious 67 square metres, it included a very private balcony where a morning observation of the fabulous views was mandatory.  Rates here start at $542 per night.

More adventures in Thailand

• A Thai Blessing
• Where to stay in Bangkok near Chinatown

Disclaimer: Eat drink and be Kerry was a guest of AirAsia, Indigo Wireless Hotel and Intercontinental Koh Samui Resort.