Chicken Stir Fry

One of my husband's favorite meals is stir-fry, and I love it because it's fairly inexpensive, healthy and quick to make. It goes together in about 30 minutes from start to finish. That means it's a home run in our family. I usually make it without paying much attention to quantities, but since I planned to post this one, I decided to measure a bit. This recipe feeds my family of 2 adults + 2 small children and leaves leftovers for lunch for the adults as well.

Chicken Stir Fry

(printable recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups of rice, prepared according to directions on bag
  
• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast - cut into 1 inch chunks
• 1 each of 3-4 vegetables - cut into 1 inch chunks: choose veggies you already have on hand and your family likes or choose what's inexpensive that week. (The picture above includes, onions, carrots, celery and yellow pepper that was on a good sale that week.)

Sauce:

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 T white cooking wine (optional - substitute water or leave out)
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 T cornstarch

Directions:

1. Put rice on to cook
2. While rice is cooking, prepare meat and vegetables. Be sure all meat and veggies are ready before you begin cooking. Once you start cooking this moves very fast.
   
3. Heat wok (or large skillet) on high heat until bead of water sizzles and evaporates on contact (about 2 minutes).
4. Add 1-2 tablespoons canola oi; heat oil until it "shimmers" (about 1-2 minutes)
5. When oil begins to shimmer, place meat in wok (be prepared it may "spit"). Spread it out a bit so all pieces of meat are touching the wok bottom. While the meat is cooking, mix the sauce ingredients together. Cook meat 2 minutes, then stir to cook completely through. When meat is completely cooked through (about 4-5 minutes total), remove from pan to serving bowl. Cover serving bowl so meat stays warm while veggies are cooked.
6. You probably won't need more oil, but if it's looking dry, you can add a bit. Be sure the oil is good and hot before adding veggies. Cook veggies in descending order of how long they will take to get hot-through. You want them crunchy, not soft and squishy. Here's the order I cooked our veggies in: onion, carrots, celery, sweet pepper. I cook each vegetable about 1 minute, stir, move them to the outside, then add the next vegetable. After 1 more minute I stir the vegetables, move them to the outside, and add the next vegetable. This continues until all the veggies are hot, but still crunchy.
7. Pour the meat back into the wok and give everything a good stir. Move meat and veggies around so that there's a small well in the middle of the pan.
   
8. Pour the sauce into the middle and immediately begin to stir. The sauce will thicken quickly and coat the meat and vegetables. When the sauce is thickened and everything is well coated (about 1-1½ minutes), pour the whole mixture into the serving dish.
9. Serve with rice and soy sauce.
   

Notes:
This recipe is very adaptable. Don't have chicken thawed? Leave it out, make vegetarian stir fry. Have an uncooked pork chop? Use that instead. Have a bit of broccoli left? Add it in. Use whatever veggies you have available. These are all veggies I have tried & used at one time or another: broccoli, onions - any variety, carrots, mushrooms, sweet peppers, celery, green beans. I'm sure you could play around with other veggies as well, though I don't recommend tomatoes or potatoes or anything that doesn't stand up to high heat.

Enjoy!

For more kitchen tips go to Tammy's Recipes.

For more frugal, healthy meals, visit the $5 Dinner Challenge.

This post was originally published on my old blog on August 26, 2008.