Teriyaki Chicken Stir Fry 06-Jul-2011

Categories: main-dishes Tags: asian chicken stir-fry

Stir-fries are easy and wonderful and you can experiment with all kinds of things. At one point, I just picked up a bunch of fresh veggies and went at it. This is the result. This recipe requires two separate pans, one to cook the vegetables and other to cook the chicken.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 4 carrots
  • 1 small yellow squash
  • 1 small zucchini
  • 1 small eggplant (if you can find japanese eggplant, so much the better)
  • a big handful of snow peas
  • 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Directions

Preparation

(It usually works to prepare the vegetables before you start cooking.)

  1. peel and slice the onion into thin strips
  2. peel and julienne the carrots, about 2 inch pieces
  3. cut the squash and zucchini into dimes (you may want to split the wide ends so they remain bite-sized)
  4. quarter the eggplant and slice horizontally
  5. cube the chicken

Cooking

  1. heat up a large frying pan, add a touch of oil or cooking spray
  2. put the onions and carrots in first and let them cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally

  3. add the squash, zucchini and eggplant

  4. heat up a second pan, put a small amount of oil or cooking spray in it

  5. put the chicken in to start to cook

  6. keep stirring the vegetables

  7. add teriyaki sauce to the vegetables and keep stirring occasionally

  8. keep stirring the chicken so it cooks on all sides

  9. as the chicken cooks, add teriyaki sauce to it, and let it simmer in the sauce

  10. at the end of cooking, add the snow peas and stir them through the vegetables to cook them slightly (you don’t want them to lose their crunch)

  11. Combine the chicken and the vegetables

  12. Serve over cooked rice

One can do this with other vegetables, as well.

Additions I have done:

  • sliced mushrooms, go in with the squash and eggplant
  • bean sprouts, go in near the end
  • a touch of rice wine vinegar to the vegetables
  • additional spices: curry powder, cardamom, garlic powder, dry mustard, ground ginger, cayenne pepper, thai chili paste

Chicken is one of those foods you can cook from frozen. While this may be convenient so you don’t have to remember to thaw out the chicken pieces, it really works better if you can cube the chicken at the start of the dish rather than having to cook it thawed to the point you can cut it up. Thawed, cubed chicken cooks much more uniformly and takes on the flavourings of the teriyaki sauce better, I’ve found, and it cooks a lot faster as well.