Chicken And Veggie Stir Fry
I’ve always enjoyed a good stir fry. Chicken or beef normally .. but chicken generally wins.
But I have a confession – I normally cheat and just add a bottle of stir-fry sauce or teriyaki sauce from the store. But with a really short list of ingredients, I don’t have to do it anymore.
It literally takes a minute to toss together a tasty stir-fry sauce from scratch.
I’m generally also a fan of adding thick udon noodles to my stir fry, but since I discovered an amazing instant pot fried rice, I have a new favourite go-to! They are amazing together.
Be warned though, you need a BIG frying pan for this. My biggest pan fills over the top making this. Use the biggest one you have … or I suppose you could half the recipe? I don’t know … I don’t cook like that. I like left overs. LOL
It was so good we had it for dinner one night, lunch the next day, AND again for dinner. And … there was still more left. It’s a couple of days of food for two people, or great for a small group of people.
The beauty of stir fry is you can really do what you want with it. Use your favourite veggies – take out ones you don’t like. I’d have liked to have added some bok choy to this, but there probably wasn’t really any room for it and the store was out when I was shopping. Maybe next time!
Chicken and Veggie Stir Fry
Equipment
- Really big frying pan
- Bowls
- Whisk
- Measuring cups/spoons
Ingredients
Sauce
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 4 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1½ tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1½ tbsp honey (or brown sugar)
Meat & Veggies
- 2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into bite-size pieces
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil (or olive oil)
- 1½ cups carrots sliced into very thin rounds, about ⅛"
- 1 small onion sliced
- 2½ cups broccoli florets stems trimmed, cut into bite-size pieces (12oz bag works here)
- 1 red bell pepper sliced into 1½" strips
- 1½ cups snow peas ends trimmed, longer ones cut in half (8oz bag)
- ½ lb sliced mushrooms
- 1 can miniature corn if whole, cut into thirds
- 1 can sliced water chestnuts
- 1 tbsp fresh ginger peeled and finely grated
- 3 tsp garlic minced
Instructions
Mise en place
- Get all of your vegetables sliced, diced, trimmed, and ready to go. Carrots, onion, broccoli, pepper, peas, mushrooms, miniature corn … get them ready to rock. As you do it, separate them into a couple of different bowls – one for the carrots and onions, one for the broccoli, bell pepper, peas, ginger, and garlic. These groups hit the frying pan together, so it makes things easier when you hit that stage. I buy mushrooms pre-sliced, so they just drop right out of the package.
- Slice up your chicken breasts into bite-size cubes. Season liberally with salt and pepper.
- In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce and cornstarch. Then whisk in the chicken broth, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and honey (or brown sugar).
Get cookin'!
- Heat a good drizzle of cooking oil in your frying pan over medium-high to high heat. Make sure there's enough to coat the bottom of the pan.
- Add chicken to the pan in and even layer. Do not stir it right away. Let the chicken cook for a minute or two first. It helps prevent sticking.
- Once the chicken is cooked through, remove it to a plate, leaving any extra oil in the pan. Reduce heat to between medium and medium-high.
- Add another drizzle of oil and the mushrooms. Saute them for a few minutes, until they start to soften and shrink.
- Add the carrots and onions to the pan and saute for 3-4 minutes.
- Add in the broccoli, pepper, peas, ginger, and garlic (see why I said to split the veggies into two bowls earlier?) and saute another 3-4 minutes.
- Add in the cooked chicken, miniature corn, and water chestnuts. These don't really need to be cooked, just heated through.
- Whisk the sauce mixture again. The corn starch has likely separated and turned hard on the bottom of the bowl by now. Make sure you get it all mixed back up again. We want all the cornstarch in the pan to thicken the sauce.
- Turn the heat back up to high.
- Add the re-whisked sauce to the pan and toss everything together to coat. Let the sauce come to a boil, which will help thicken it.
- Serve immediately with rice (or some type of noodles if you like).
- For a little extra heat, if desired, sprinkle with red pepper flakes.
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