Curry Paste vs. Curry Powder: Wet and Dry, Thai and British-Indian

Curry paste and curry powder share a word and a few spices, but they’re built differently. A Thai curry paste is a wet, ground mixture of chiles with fresh aromatics like galangal and lemongrass, some dried spices and, usually, shrimp paste or dried fish. Curry powder is a dry blend of ground spices, with turmeric for color and no chile required.¹ The paste brings heat, moisture and fresh herb flavor; the powder brings warm, dried-spice flavor and a yellow color. They can only loosely stand in for each other, and even which Thai paste is hottest is up for debate.

“Curry paste” doesn’t always mean Thai, either. Some Indian masalas get blended with a liquid, like water or vinegar, to make a curry paste. Here we’re comparing Thai-style pastes, the ones most cooks mean, with ordinary curry powder.

Side by side

Two kinds of “curry”

In Thailand, the word curry (kaeng or gaeng) almost always means food cooked in coconut milk. The paste is the seasoning base for that dish. Curry powder has a different history. British settlers in India adapted it, while in traditional Indian cooking, spice mixtures are called masala and made at home. And there’s never been a set combination of spices in curry powder. So the two answer different questions: what goes into a Thai coconut curry, and what stands in for an Indian spice mix in a British kitchen.

What goes into a Thai paste

A Thai paste usually brings together chiles, fresh spices (ginger, fingerroot, galangal, garlic, onion), dried spices (cumin and coriander seeds), shrimp paste or dried fish, and fragrant leaves like makrut lime leaves, lemongrass and coriander leaves. Rebecca Seal, writing in National Geographic, gives a similar list for a fresh green curry paste: white pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander, fresh galangal, lemongrass, shallots, green chilies, coriander root, garlic and kapi, the Thai shrimp paste.³ Lemongrass also gets combined with garlic, makrut lime leaf and other herbs to make a thick curry paste, and a Thai restaurant featured by SBS Food uses makrut lime leaves in its Panang, green and hor mok pastes.⁵

The variants differ mostly in their chiles. Katzer describes green paste as made with green chiles, plenty of garlic and coriander leaves; red paste as getting its color from ripe red chiles, often dried and toasted; an orange version with lots of fresh turmeric; and masaman as a slightly milder red paste with aromatic spices “in the Indian fashion.”²

Most of what makes a Thai paste distinctive is fresh: galangal, lemongrass, makrut lime leaf, coriander root, shallots and garlic. A dry curry powder has none of them, and that’s the main reason the two don’t swap cleanly.

Which is hotter?

Curry powder’s heat depends entirely on whether the blend has chile in it; the USDA’s specification lists black pepper but no chile.¹ Thai pastes are chile-based, but the sources disagree on how the colors compare:

You’ll often see green ranked hottest and yellow mildest. We found no source for that ranking. Heat depends on the chiles in the jar or the mortar, so taste a little of an unfamiliar paste before you add the rest.

How each is cooked

Paste. Katzer says you can fry the paste in a little oil first until it smells aromatic, then dissolve it in coconut milk and bring it to a boil. Some recipes skip the frying, and he notes that opinions on it vary, except for masaman, where frying brings out more flavor.² Seal says the most common method is to fry the paste gently in a little coconut cream. She also reports that almost all chefs and food writers agree homemade paste beats paste from a jar.³

Powder. You can fry curry powder in fat too, but carefully. America’s Test Kitchen recommends blooming ground spices in fat for anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes, warns that ground spices burn fairly quickly, and notes that ground spices and spice pastes bloom at different rates.⁶

Can one stand in for the other?

Loosely.

Curry powder in place of curry paste. Powder can give you the cumin and coriander a paste contains,²¹ but not its fresh chiles, galangal, lemongrass, lime leaf or shrimp paste. If you have them, build a quick base: soften garlic, ginger or galangal, and fresh chile in oil, add the curry powder for the last 30 seconds or so, then pour in the coconut milk. Ratio (Method): start with about 1 teaspoon of curry powder for each tablespoon of paste, and adjust after tasting. You’ll end up closer to a British-style curry than a Thai one.

Curry paste in place of curry powder. A paste adds chile heat and, in Thai pastes, shrimp paste or dried fish,² neither of which a curry powder recipe expects. Ratio (Method): start small, about a teaspoon of paste per teaspoon of powder. Fry it in the fat, taste, and add more only if the dish needs it.

Both swaps work best in dishes that are just “a curry.” In a recipe built around a specific Thai paste or a specific powder, the difference will show.

What isn’t known

• No source compares the heat of commercial green, red and yellow pastes by measurement, and the sources we have disagree.
• We didn’t research how long an opened jar of paste keeps.

Related

• Curry powder, curry spices, is curry powder spicy?, cooking with curry powder and too much curry powder?
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