Food I love - Vegetable Peanut Butter Stir fry

Hi Guys, hope you are having a chilled weekend? The recipe I'm sharing today is my newest tasty discovery. I’m a natural peanut butter lover through and through, usually, I spread it on toast, use for pastries or  as a dip for vegetables and fruits. But lately I started looking out for new ways to include it in my diet, since its quite protein rich and anything that gives good protein when you are trying to eat healthy is a good thing right?

Vegetable Peanut Butter Stir fry and rice served with watermelon-cucumber blast

Well...while on the quest for other ways to incorporate peanut  butter into my diet, I can across a ton of interesting recipes using peanut butter, based on my food habit and preference I was naturally drawn to combinations of peanut butter and vegetables, and this particular recipe was at the top of my must try list.

Surprisingly, it turned out pretty tasty, had a great texture and the best part was how easy and quick it was to make!

One of the best decisions I made while testing out this recipe was adding cucumbers, who knew one could add cucumbers to stir fries? It gave this dish a light palate cleansing taste that just totally won me over, love it!

After looking at several combination of recipes, this was how I tweaked them to achieve this gorgeous dish!

These are the Ingredients you would need

Peanut Butter (I used skippy, which has a mild peanut flavour, you can use a peanut butter with more intense peanut flavour if that’s what you prefer).

Boneless skinless chicken breast

Sesame seed oil

White wine vinegar ( Red or cider vinegar would be fine as well)

Corn flour

Soy sauce

Fish sauce

Garlic

Carrot

Cucumber

Some Chicken stock if available

Green peppers

Red Bell peppers

Ground Chilli or Black pepper

1.Cut chicken breast into 1inch stripes or cubes, whatever shape you fancy really. Spice it up with some fish sauce, chilli and some sesame oil. Leave to marinate for at least 30mins.

Chicken in marinade of fish sauce, chilli and sesame oil

2. In a separate dish, put some of your peanut butter about 1tbs is fine, soy sauce and some sesame oil to loosen the paste just a bit, mix thoroughly to form a smooth paste.

Peanut Butter Paste for Chicken

3.   Heat up a pan or wok, add a bit of oil, some garlic and marinated chicken strips. Stir fry for about 2mins to achieve a cooked but tender chicken. Do not cook for too long, that would toughen your chicken. Now add your peanut paste and allow chicken coat thoroughly and set aside. The process of coating the chicken with the peanut sauce should be fast and should only be a couple of seconds in the pan as peanut butter burns fast.

Chicken In peanut sauce

4.   Scoop out the insides of the cucumber and chop up all your vegetables, and then make another peanut butter paste. This time mix together your peanut butter, with some sugar or honey, soy sauce, vinegar, some chillies and a mixture of corn starch mixed with chicken stock. Try to achieve a fairly thick consistency and again mix thoroughly to achieve a smooth paste.

5.   Heat up a clean pan, add some garlic and the carrot and cook until carrot is slightly tender. Then add the red and green pepper cook for a bout a minute and add you cucumber, fish sauce and a bit of sesame oil. Finally add your peanut paste, stir to coat all the vegetables thoroughly and set aside. This is the stage where you can add your chicken if you want it in the sauce, I chose to serve mine separately.

Vegetable Peanut Butter Stir fry and rice served with watermelon-cucumber blast

Vegetable Peanut Butter Stir fry and rice served with watermelon-cucumber blast

That’s it! easy and quick right? trust me your tongue would be dancing too, because its packed full of great flavours.

Now serve with or over rice, noodles or pasta and a great drink like mine, watch out for the recipe of how to make it, and ooh! yeah thank me later :).

Notes: A couple of adjustments I would make the next time I try this, first I would increase the quantity of my second peanut sauce by adding more peanut butter and cornstarch/ chicken stock mixture so I can have more sauce in my vegetables.

I would also like to try using chunky peanut butter or probably add some crushed peanuts to the stir fry at the end so as to get more crunch and a slightly more intense peanut flavour.

I would also try using a fuller flavoured peanut butter, skippy was all I had at home, however the taste was actually not bad.

I also think some broccoli and mushrooms would be great next time, you can never have too much vegetables.

Finally, I’ll probably skip the sugar or honey next time, because I think the taste would be just fine without it. The sugar was added to balance out the taste of the vinegar but If I use just a little vinegar then I would not be needing the sugar.

Tried it?  let me know what you did differently and how it came out.

Bon Apetit!