chicken vegetables stir fry with hoisin ginger sauce

Stir fries are a favourite easy meal of mine, as my recipe track record suggests. I tend to rely pretty heavily on hoisin in them, but hey use what you know. This one was a pretty simple weeknight meal, and I did all the prep and cooking in less than an hour while talking with Bunny.

This was a compromise between wanting a veggie heavy meal and wanting to incorporate some protein. Frozen chicken breasts happened to be easy and available, so I used those, but this would have been absolutely delicious with thinly sliced beef. As with all the stir fries, you can use this recipe as is, but really it's just a guideline. Switch up the vegetables for things that you love and you'll be happy.

I'm also all about debunking the idea that it's hard to make a stir fry sauce. Yes, I use the same base ingredients. You'll notice that not only is hoisin a repeat offender, but so is sesame oil and soy sauce. Part of it is just that since this isn't a common meal right now I'm not stocking my fridge too many different ingredients for stir fries. In the future I'd like to play around with black bean sauce, peanut oil, and some other ingredients that seem exotic to me but I use what I have.

I also had some fun cookware to play with, as my mom had an electric wok sitting around. Nowhere near as awesome as a real wok, that you can easily turn about as need be, but it definitely did the job. And it was really nice to have enough cooking space.

Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry with Hoisin Ginger Sauce

• 1/2 cup hoisin
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1-2 tsp chili flakes in oil (depending on your spice tolerance)
• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• juice and zest of 2 limes
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp water
• 2 chicken breasts, cubed
• 5 heads baby bok choi (cut the base off and separate all the leaves)
• 4 small carrots, sliced in 1/2" disks
• 3 bell peppers, sliced into strips
• 3 green onions, finely chopped
• 1-2 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions

1. In a bowl combine the hoisin, sesame oil, chili flakes, soy sauce, lime juice and zest, ginger, fish sauce and water. Stir it up and put it aside.
2. In a large skillet or wok over medium high to high heat, get about 1/2 the cooking oil sizzling. Add the cubed chicken to the wok and saute, stirring vigourously, until the outside edges are completely opaque, about 3-5 minutes. Because the chicken has been diced into somewhat small pieces, once the outsides are opaque the insides should be good to go. Remove from the wok to a small bowl and set aside for later.
3. Add more oil to the wok if necessary, it should be just lightly coated but no oil should be pooling at the bottom. Add the carrots to the pan and cook stirring vigourously about 2 minutes.
4. Add the bell pepper strips, cooking a further minute.
5. Add the bok choi and cook another 2 to 3 minutes, until the portions begin to wilt.
6. Put the chicken back into the wok and pour the sauce over everything. Mix it up well until all the ingrediens are coated and things are evenly mixed up.
7. Turn off the heat. Serve over rice.