CHICKEN STIR FRY

Chicken Stir Fry with an Asian flair

This chicken stir fry is an easy way to bring the flavors of Asian cooking to your dinner table without paying for take out. Ricky has combined some easily found ingredients and come up with this delicious vegetable packed stir fry that a sauce flavors found in chicken dishes served at Asian restaurants.

This recipe can be made with or without chicken. The variety of tastes and textures of the vegetables can carry the meal on it’s own.

Stir frying has advantages

Stir frying started to surge in popularity as part of the healthy eating movement. It is an excellent way to cook quick, cook easy, and cook smart. Quick because you are cooking ingredients on the stove top at a high temperature. Easy, because you are cooking all the ingredients in one skillet. Smart, because you are using fresh produce, and cooking it in a manner that preserves a lot of the flavor and nutrients that they offer.

Ricky’s Asian flavorings

Sesame seed oil, soy sauce and ginger. These are the ingredients used to give this chicken stir fry flavors found in Asian cooking. If you have to buy all three ingredients at once, it’s a little pricey but not outrageous. Consider it an investment in many good dinners to come. They all store well and a little goes a long way.

Sesame seed oil is not one of the cheapest oils, but it is worth it’s price in flavor. There are two types of sesame seed oil, one is made from oil pressed from sesame seeds, the other is made from seeds that have been toasted. The oil made of toasted seeds is considerably more expensive than it’s plain counterpart. You can learn more about the difference in the oils in our cooking tidbit Using Sesame Oil. Once you have made the initial investment, we have all sorts of other recipes you can use it in.

You can use ground ginger or chopped and jarred fresh ginger in this stir fry. Want to read a little more about using ginger in your cooking, and what the difference in flavor is between fresh and ground? We have a tidbit on that too Learn About Using Ginger.

Some other recipes to try

We have several recipes made with the flavors used in this stir fry.

The marinade used in Ricky’s MARINATED CHICKEN THIGHS uses these Asian flavorings in a different way.

A couple of other quick stir fry recipes with the same flavor profile and lots of healthy vegetables are FLASH FRIED BEEF WITH VEGETABLES, which can be made with or without meat, and PINEAPPLE CHICKEN.

These are all great recipes and though using the same flavors, each dinner is very different from the others.

Be prepared

Through years of cooking dinner, we have learned that preparation saves time, energy and frustration. Preparing your ingredients before you start to cook will always make things easier, but recipes like this one that cook up quickly are almost impossible to get right if you are not prepared.

This recipe from beginning to end is only going to take you 30-40 minutes. Once you have started cooking, you don’t have time to get the next ingredient(s) ready to be added into the skillet without overcooking what is already in there.

Spare yourself some grief. You need to get the ingredients ready to cook at some point anyway, right? You might as well have them ready before you cook and ensure a successful result. One of the big reasons why people think cooking dinner is a big deal is they haven’t used their time effectively in the past and prepared their ingredients before cooking.

You can read more about our thoughts on the subject of preparing ahead, in our posts Ready….Set….Prep and Get Ready to Be Ready and Our Formula: Prep time = Saved time.

A word to the wise

Before you use fresh vegetables in your cooking, rinse them off thoroughly with warm water and dry them with a clean cloth or paper towel. We have a post you can read about that too; What to Wash before you Eat. We hope after reading it, you will take that extra minute to rinse your fresh vegetables, before you chop them, as part of your routine preparation.

When you throw an unwashed, chopped green pepper into your skillet to simmer in a sauce, everything on the outside of that pepper becomes part of your dinner. I bet you don’t need our post to spark your imagination about where that green pepper has been, and just what has been left behind as it has made it’s way to your kitchen.

So let’s get to it

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

About the ingredients

The Asian flavored sauce

In the previous section we talked about sesame seed oil, ginger and soy sauce. You can learn more about them in the tidbits listed above. Our cooking tidbits are snippets of information about ingredients called for in a recipe, in case you are not familiar with using them.

Bean sprouts

Are you familiar with bean sprouts? Have you ever cooked with them? I always associate bean sprouts with Asian cooking. I like the little crunch they can add to a dish. They don’t have a lot of flavor of their own, so they don’t compete with other ingredients when you use them in a recipe.

Although most stores I shop at carry bean sprouts, I have had to hunt them down. So I will share where I have found them. They need to be refrigerated to retain peak freshness but I haven’t been able to find them in the regular refrigerated section where heads of lettuce and fresh herbs are found. I can only find them in small clear bags in the refrigerated unit in the organic section. Given the nature of growing and cultivating sprouts, it’s not surprising they are organic.

Not everyone likes bean sprouts. If you don’t like them, leave them out. But if you want to try them, this is a great recipe to use them in.

Water chestnuts

It amazes me how many people don’t like water chestnuts because they don’t have a lot of flavor of their own. They are even crunchier than bean sprouts, so they definitely add another texture to this recipe. I have even added chopped water chestnuts to dips to add some crunch.

If you haven’t bought water chestnuts before, they can be found in the section of the store featuring Asian cooking products. They are canned. You only need a small can of maybe 3 to 4 ounces. Sometimes I can only find an 8 ounce can which is more than I need for this recipe. I just toss the rest. They are not expensive. Use only as much as you want. If you don’t like them or you don’t have them on hand just leave them out.

Boneless chicken breast

Have you noticed how BIG some of the boneless chicken breasts are these days? I have seen some that look more like a turkey’s breast than a chicken’s. Sometimes I look at the size of the breast and picture just how big this chicken must have been. I wouldn’t want to be in a pen with one of these overgrown chickens on a day they felt ornery. 🐔😲 🏃‍♀️

Finding such large chicken breasts is a fairly new thing. Years ago, chicken farmers were not growing their meat birds to be that large.

With the booming popularity of chicken wings, lots of things have changed when it comes to buying chicken. The biggest change is pricing. Breast meat used to be the most expensive part of a chicken, especially a boneless breast, and chicken wings were almost a give away. I used to get a 20 pound bag of chicken wings at a meat market for 5 bucks! Now the breasts are the give away and wings cost a fortune. I shutter to think what it would cost to walk out of a meat market with a 20 pound bag of wings today!

Anyway, the point is, if you have a huge chicken breast, you will only need one half of the breast. Not both sides.

This is WHAT TO DO:

Chop the vegetables and chicken

Chop the vegetables. Cut the celery stalks into 1/4 inch pieces, the red pepper into bite sized pieces, and cut the garlic and scallion into a small chop, using the green stems of the scallions as well as the white bulb.

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces. The size of the pieces aren’t as important as getting them as uniform in size as possible. The uniform size will ensure all your chicken will be done at the same time, as long as you have been stirring them while they are cooking.

Mix up the sauce

Mix the chicken broth, soy sauce and ginger together in a small bowl or measuring cup and put it aside for later.

Have the sesame oil ready at the stove

Pour 1/3 cup sesame oil into a measuring cup. You will be adding oil to the skillet as needed while you are cooking.

Are you serving over a bed of rice or noodles?

If you are going to be serving the stir fry over a starch, such has rice, pasta or noodles, you need to factor in the time it will take to cook the starch. Brown rice could take up to 45 minutes to cook. If you are using ramen noodles they will take only a few minutes. The vegetables and chicken will be done in about 40 minutes so try to time it so the starch is done about the same time.

We are ready to cook

Have your ingredients ready and close by

You are going to be adding the ingredients at different times as you are cooking the stir fry, because some ingredients take longer than others to cook. Also, you have to stir the ingredients in the skillet continuously so you will want to have them close at hand.

Sauté

Warm up a large skillet on medium high heat and then cover the bottom with some of the sesame oil. Add the red pepper and celery first. They will take the longest to cook. But you have a lot of ingredients to go, so don’t cook them until they are tender, just cook until they are not crisp anymore. It should take about 6 minutes. Then add the scallions and garlic for a couple of minutes more until they are getting tender.

Add the bean sprouts and water chestnuts to the skillet and cook for 3-4 minutes until the bean sprouts start to soften.

Want a meatless meal?

You can serve this stir fry without chicken for a delicious meatless meal, or a tasty vegetable side dish. If you are not adding the chicken, skip the next section and go right to adding the sauce.

Time to add the chicken

Before adding the chicken to the skillet, add the rest of the sesame oil. Your skillet is pretty full at this point, and you need to cook the chicken evenly, so continue to move your ingredients around frequently. If you find the ingredients in the skillet are no longer sizzling after the chicken has been added, turn the heat up until you hear it sizzling again, then bring the heat back down to medium high. Maintaining a sizzle is important. You need the chicken to cook fast to keep it moist and tender. If they chicken is allowed to cook slowly, it will steam instead of sauté and become chewy and tasteless.

Chicken should always be cooked thoroughly. Cut it with a fork to make sure there is no pink in the middle. Be vigilant in checking, don’t overcook the chicken. Overcooked chicken breast is very dry.

Time to add the sauce

When the chicken is done, add the broth/soy sauce/ginger sauce and bring it to a boil. It should not take long, your skillet is already hot. When the sauce has reached the boiling point, take the skillet off the heat.

Serve

You can serve your chicken stir fry over rice, noodles, pasta or you can skip the starch and eat it as it is.