These Meal Kits Cure My Weeknight Curry and Laksa Cravings

This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what we’re eating, drinking, and buying. Here, Urmila Ramakrishnan writes about the spice kits that make cozy weeknight meals attainable in record time.

Making curry laksa from scratch is kind of like making Sunday sauce—the creamy, gently spicy noodle soup is an intensive labor of love that takes an entire day, if not longer. But that doesn’t help when a sudden craving strikes on a Wednesday night. That’s where Homiah makes dinner a bit easier. The Southeast Asian spice kit brand markets itself as a Southeast Asian Pantry that delivers “flavor without the fuss.”

Like Omsom, the small-batch brand that delivers big on flavor, Homiah simplifies the most iconic dishes of the Malay archipelago without watering them down. The brand offers three different kits that make two servings of either Singaporean Laksa, Indonesian Rendang, or Malaysian Red Curry. At the core of Homiah’s kits is a technique called rempah, which involves pounding spices into a wet paste before frying them to release the flavors.

Rempah is the most arduous part of making laksa, along with sourcing ingredients like candlenuts, galangal, and belacan. Homiah condenses this hours-long process into one that takes mere minutes. All you have to do is simmer the sauce packet with water, then add your favorite noodles, toppings, and a splash of coconut milk. I usually bulk mine out with toppings like puffed tofu, a 7-minute jammy egg, bean sprouts, or frozen shrimp balls.

The end result tastes like a soup that’s been simmering away for hours in a haze of coconut milk and spices. It strikes a balance of just spicy enough, but also a little sweet, and the whole concoction coats your mouth the way that the best laksas do. I still relish making laksa from scratch on the occasional lazy Sunday, but it’s nice to have Homiah in my pantry for those chilly, cozy weeknight meals—and it’s so much better than ordering takeout.