GLORIOUS! Sunny Thai Chicken Soup – Review

I’d love to go back to Thailand. I visited in 2005 – so long ago that I only have printed photos as opposed to digital, as you’ll see below. Travelling around the country, it was great to see so many different sides to the country: the ridiculously busy financial district in Bangkok where our hotel was based, nobody walking to work because of the pollution…the hilly, forested areas of the north, still inhabited by hill tribes and where elephant trekking is the best way to get around, and the beauty of Thailand’s coastline and the chance to relax by the clear blue water in Phuket (sadly, the damage from the previous year’s tsunami was still evident).

There’s no denying that the food was outstanding too. Bangkok’s Patpong Night Market was a revelation: it’s been going since the 1960s, and opens from 6pm to 1am every day of the week. While some go for shopping, it’s well worth visiting for the food…no doubt the prices have gone up since I was there, but I remember enjoying huge bowls of steaming noodles, fragrant with lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves, for about £1 per bowl. It was in Thailand that I was first introduced to the sour spiciness of tom yum soup too, along with the sweet and rich massaman curry, made with peanuts, potatoes and meat, along with coconut milk. They’re all dishes that I still enjoy regularly, reminding me of the cultural richness of Thailand.

So, when GLORIOUS! got in touch and asked me to write about one of my favourite destinations, inspired by one of their soups, it was easy to decide which to choose. The Sunny Thai Chicken immediately stood out – like the whole GLORIOUS! range, it uses authentic ingredients to recreate the true flavours of Thailand at home, and the combination of chicken, sweet potato and Thai spices not only sounded perfect in terms of re-igniting my desire to go back to Thailand, but also in terms of offering a warming winter meal – it’s bloody freezing in Bristol at the moment…

While GLORIOUS! soups are designed to be hearty enough to enjoy as a whole meal, it doesn’t feel quite right to have soup without some form of bread on the side…and I decided to experiment with a few Thai flavours there too. Cutting slices through a part-baked baguette, I smeared a mixture of softened butter, garlic, lemongrass, ginger and red chilli between each slice to make a Thai-style take on garlic bread, and (if I do say so myself) it was amazing, and something I’ll definitely be doing again…

The soup itself was beautiful. Open the pot and smell – it’s seriously aromatic, the scent of the lime leaves and lemongrass that the soup contains really coming through. Straight away you can see the green flecks of the lime leaves, coriander and spinach, and it’s easy to identify other key ingredients from sight alone too – it looked fantastic.

After heating in a pan for a few minutes, it was time to dig in – and we’ll definitely be buying this soup again. While there were no decent sized pieces of chicken (more thin strands than anything) the flavour still came through, accompanied by chunks of sweet potato, carrot, potato, pearl barley and whole chickpeas which added texture as well as flavour. There was the smallest amount of red chilli heat, along with a bit more of a kick from the added ginger, the ingredients combining to create a flavour combination that really was reminiscent of my trip to Thailand all those years ago.

I couldn’t eat the soup without making my favourite Thai dessert, which sadly didn’t go down too well with the boyfriend (he’s not a rice pudding fan, so it’s understandable) but which is super-simple and really tasty. Sticky coconut rice with fresh mango is probably more of a summer dessert, although the rice can be served either hot or cold, depending on your taste.

All you need to do is to cook the Thai sticky rice until it has taken in all of the water, and, in the meantime, combine coconut milk and sugar (I didn’t use the granulated sugar in the picture above in the end – I used coconut sugar instead). Warm this mixture to dissolve the sugar, then add most of it to the rice, mixing well. Slice up a mango, and arrange the rice and mango on a plate, drizzling with the remaining coconut milk/sugar combination. Delicious.

If you’re a blogger and fancy winning a holiday to Mumbai, GLORIOUS! are currently running a competition that gives you the opportunity to do just that. All you need to do is to write a blog post about your own GLORIOUS! soup adventure, linking to their website and sharing via social media with the competition hashtag. Full details can be found here – and the competition closes at midnight on November 30th. Good luck!

Please note: this post was commissioned by GLORIOUS!, but this in no way impacted on our opinion. We were not obliged to write a positive review, and the company did not see this review before it was put up on the site.

This blog post is an entry into the Foodies100/GLORIOUS! soup #GloriousAdventures blogger challenge.