Time for another savory recipe! I honestly kind of forgot about this recipe…I made it several months ago, and then wanted to share some fun summer recipes such as this ice cream and this salad featuring summer produce. All that to say, here we are with this peanut ginger chicken stir-fry that has the most delicious savory peanut butter sauce. It’s downright addicting. If you’ve never tried a savory peanut butter sauce before…prepare to be amazed. 🙂
It should be any surprise by now that I LOVE peanut butter. Whether it’s in monster cookies, breakfast cookies, edible cookie dough, strawberry peanut butter, or honey cinnamon copy-cat RX peanut butter, there’s certainly been a lot of peanut butter love around here. BUT. Today is the very first day that a SAVORY recipe makes an appearance with peanut butter!
Let’s talk a little bit more about the sauce first…because clearly that’s the part I’m most excited about!
Peanut Ginger Sauce Ingredients
Peanut Butter
I mean….it’s not exactly a PEANUT ginger sauce without peanut butter. However, if you have a nut allergy or are somehow not a peanut butter fan, you can definitely substitute any other nut or seed butter (such as almond, cashew, or sunflower seed butter) in place of the peanut butter. My favorite type of peanut butter is a natural peanut butter made of simply peanuts and salt. You know, the kind that you have to actually stir the naturally-separated oil back in which annoys the heck out of my husband. We each have our own separate peanut butters at home, thank you very much. I buy the shelf-stable Jif peanut butter for him, and the natural, refrigerated peanut butter for me. I just think you can’t beat the fresh texture. But any peanut butter will work here!
Soy Sauce
Soy sauce is a pretty typical ingredient in stir-fries. I always buy the lower-sodium; trust me, it’s plenty salty enough. Coconut aminos is a gluten-free alternative to soy sauce.
Fresh Ginger
If you’ve never tried fresh ginger before….now’s a great time to start with this recipe! Fresh ginger has such a better flavor profile in my opinion for this recipe. Fresh ginger is found in the produce section at the grocery store, and it literally looks like a brown root. You need to peel the outer layer of the fresh ginger before using it. I often use a garlic press to mince the ginger, but since you will be blending the sauce ingredients together you can simply finely dice it with a knife. You will just need a small amount for this recipe. If you don’t have or want to buy fresh ginger, you can substitute dried…but it’s not going to taste quite the same. I’d try substituting about 1 teaspoon dried ginger in place of the 1 tablespoon fresh ginger.
Garlic
Same with the fresh ginger, I highly recommend using fresh garlic cloves for this recipe! You could substitute 1 teaspoon garlic powder if you don’t have fresh garlic.
Pure Maple Syrup
Please 100% pure maple syrup, not the pancake syrup. Honey or agave should be just fine if you’d rather use these!
Sesame Oil
Sesame oil is also an important ingredient in this recipe. If you’ve never tried it before, it has a rather strong flavor that is DELICIOUS in Asian/stir-fry recipes. A little bit goes a long way! You could of course substitute with another type of oil, but the flavor isn’t going to be quite as good.
Stir Fry Ingredients
Chicken
I used chicken thighs in this recipe, but chicken breast would work great too! If you’re vegetarian, you could try substituting tempeh or tofu in place of the chicken.
Vegetables
I chose to use some of my favorite (and colorful!) veggies in this stir-fry: broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, and bell pepper. However, feel free to mix and match whatever vegetables you like! Other ideas include sugar snap peas, onions, zucchini, yellow squash, green pepper, cauliflower, etc. Be creative! This is a great recipe to use up any random veggies in your fridge that are on their last leg.
I’d love to hear if you tried this recipe! 🙂
- 1.5 lb chicken (breasts or thighs, I used thighs)
- 2 tablespoons oil, divided
- 1 ½ cups carrots, diced
- 8 ounces (about 2 cups) baby bella mushrooms, diced
- 2 cups chopped broccoli
- 1 ½ cups diced red bell pepper (about 1 large pepper)
- Peanut Ginger Sauce
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
- ½ cup soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
- 2 tablespoons garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- First, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a skillet over medium heart. Cook the chicken until no longer pink and set aside.
- Next, heat remaining tablespoon of oil and sauté veggies until crisp-tender.
- Blend all sauce ingredients together in blender and add to chicken/veggies.
- Enjoy!
Recent Comments