Thai · Seafood
Tom yum soup with prawns
About this recipe
Thai cooking balances four flavours in every dish — sweet, sour, salty, spicy — anchored to the day's market. Fish sauce, fresh herbs, chiles, citrus, and palm sugar are the constants; the rest changes with what's freshest.
As a seafood dish, Tom yum soup with prawns demands timing precision: the difference between perfect and overcooked is often less than 90 seconds, and the result of overshooting is a textural penalty there's no fixing.
Set your servings in the scaler above and every line of the recipe rewrites itself with smart fractions and unit promotion. Open Cook Mode to step through it hands-free with timers running.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
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Method
- step 1
- Pour 1.3 litres water into a large saucepan over a high heat. Add the onion, tomato, chilli, galangal, lemongrass, prawn heads and chicken stock cube. Stir and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 20 mins until the liquid has reduced.
- step 2
- Carefully strain the hot broth into a large heatproof bowl or jug, then discard the prawn heads. Return the strained veg and herb mixture to the saucepan and pour over the broth. Stir through the mushrooms and lime leaves, then cook for 3 mins until the mushrooms are tender.
- step 3
- Add 1 tbsp sugar, the fish sauce, lime juice, coconut milk and prawns. Bring to the boil and cook until the prawns are cooked through, about 1-2 mins. Remove from the heat. Remove the lemongrass, then stir in the Thai chilli jam, if using. Scatter over the coriander to finish, if you like, and serve.
Cooking notes
Scaling works best when you weigh ingredients rather than measure by volume — small differences in packing can compound at higher multipliers.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Tom yum soup with prawns
Tom yum soup with prawns is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Seafood is the most scaling-sensitive protein because the overcooking window is narrow and the penalty is steep. Scale Tom yum soup with prawns per piece if you can — cook three fillets in two batches rather than crowd the pan into one. Sauce-based seafood dishes scale linearly, but always taste before adding more salt: brininess from the seafood itself doesn't scale predictably.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Tom yum soup with prawns
If you're cooking Tom yum soup with prawns for a future meal (or doubling up for leftovers), here's how this dish handles storage, reheating, and the timing decisions most recipes don't spell out.
Make-ahead, storage, and reheating
Seafood is the worst-tempered category for make-ahead — texture and flavour both degrade quickly after cooking. Tom yum soup with prawns should ideally be cooked the day it's served. If a make-ahead is unavoidable, prep components (the sauce, marinade, vegetables, garnishes) the day before and cook the fish or shellfish at the last moment. Cooked seafood develops a pronounced fishy off-flavour within 24 hours even when properly refrigerated.
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Tom yum soup with prawns
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OpenIngredient density
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Original essays on the small details.
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Beyond the USDA's 3–4 days: the variables that actually determine the safe window
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Go deeper
Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
Each guide below is a real essay on the cuisine or the category — pillars, staples, techniques worth learning — paired with a curated grid of recipes filed under it.
Cuisine guide · Thai
Cooking the Thai way
Salt, sweet, sour, hot, bitter — balanced in a single bite.
Open the guideCategory guide · Seafood
How to cook in this category
The fastest cooking in any kitchen — and the most unforgiving to overcook.
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