Chicken-Peanut Stir-Fry

Stir-Fry is one of my favorite dishes to prepare. Growing up in Seattle I was lucky to be surrounded by numerous restaurants and an entire international district full of delicious food. Best of all were all the ethnic grocery stores that were literally everywhere. I never had problems finding any ingredients and was fortunate to have friends moms teach me to make dishes that were far from my comfort zone. These were the foundations for my love of cooking. I tried just about every type of recipe that I had someone that could teach me to prepare and would spend hours looking through the various groceries stores for ingredients that I had never heard of. Some ingredients I loved and some not as much. An example is gooey duck, I have tried it more than once and still can't get a taste for it. One of my friends from back home though insists that it can be delicious. When I moved to West Virgina I was in for a shock. There was one international market in my area and a small Lebanese market. A couple of years ago the international market closed so I am down to one store to discover hard to find ingredients. I have also discovered how generous my friends and family are back home. Numerous times I have received care packages filled with ingredients not available in my area. I have also successfully converted my in-laws to branch past the food that they were used to eating and discover how great new foods can be. I was pleased to discover that the June issue of the Food Network Magazine had a recipe for Chicken-Peanut Stir-Fry, which looked delicious and easy to prepare.

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 25 minutes of total time, all of which is active and makes 4 servings. I had to go to multiple grocery stores to find all the ingredients. Nappa cabbage can be hit or miss to find in my area and I picked a week when it was sparse. Luckily I was able to find it at the third store I tried. I had no problems finding any of the other ingredients. Instead of basmati rice I used the jasmine rice I already had in my cupboard. My chicken took longer to cook than the time suggested by the recipe. I think that I might have cut my chicken slightly larger than suggested and hence why it took longer to cook. Finally, the bunch of scallions that I bought was very big so instead of using the whole bunch I used four scallions in total. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

My two boys loved this recipe and ate their whole servings. I love that the recipe has 35 grams of protein per serving and is lower in sodium than most stir-fry recipes. Since the soy sauce and peanuts were salted I found that I didn't have to add additional salt, which was a pleasant change of pace. This recipe states that it makes 4 servings and it makes exactly that amount. There was just enough for my family to eat for one meal with no leftovers. If you are serving more than four people or want leftovers I would suggest doubling the recipe. Overall an easy Stir-fry recipe that even people that have never made stir-fry before would be comfortable preparing.

For the recipe go to Chicken-Peanut Stir-Fry.