Recipes at the top, sweet blog post below.
Kira's Best Ever Stir Fry
Ingredients
- ½ head of cabbage, diced roughly
- 2 lbs chicken tenders, cut into bite size pieces
- 4 large carrots, peeled and cut into bite size pieces
- 1 medium sweet onion, diced
- 2 medium green onions, diced and separated green from white
- 2 bags steamed broccoli florets
- 1 tbsp minced garlic
- ½ tbsp Gochujang (Korean Red Chili Sauce)
- 4 tbsp canola oil
- Sprinklings of: Pink Himalayan Salt, Shichimi Togarashi, Penzey’s bangkok blend, Ground white pepper*
- Sesame seeds, to top (optional)
Sauce Ingredients
- ¼ Sempio Jin Gold’s Soy Sauce (Korean)
- ¼ Low Sodium Soy Sauce
- ½ cup Sake
- ½ cup Mirin
- ¼ cup Pure Cane or Turbinado sugar
- ½ tbsp cornstarch (optional)
*Note: I use enough of these spices to cover. It equates to roughly 1 tsp+ of each with the exception of the pepper (½ tsp).
Cut vegetables. Preheat cast iron skillet on medium heat. Add 2 tbsp canola oil to hot skillet. Add onions and carrots. Cook until onion is translucent and brown. Add 1 tbsp minced garlic. Stir. Add cabbage and let cook until cabbage starts to wilt.
*Note: I use enough of these spices to cover. It equates to roughly 1 tsp+ of each with the exception of the pepper (½ tsp).
While cabbage is cooking, add bangkok blend and shichimi togarashi to meat and toss. Stir and add the sprinkling spices to cover the top. Stir. Add in the Gochujang and stir. Once cabbage is fully cooked, remove from pan into large bowl and set aside. In same headed cast iron, add 2 tbsp canola. Add meat. Let sit to allow meat to brown. When meat starts to pull away from skillet, stir to flip. Add in white part of green onion and continue to cook until no fluid is left in the pan. While cooking, whisk together sauce ingredients. Add to skillet. Turn up heat to medium high. Let sauce come to a simmer and then whisk in the cornstarch. Keep on medium high heat until sake boils off and sauce reduces. It will begin to darken and thicken. When syrupy and dark, turn off heat. Cook steamed broccoli according to microwave instructions. Add broccoli and skillet contents to large pan with vegetables and stir.
To serve, add ~⅔ cup of cooked jasmine rice and ⅔ cup of stir fry. Sprinkle stir fry with sesame seeds and some green part of green onion. Add on a little kimchi on the side if you have any. 🙂
It's Stir Fry-day!!!!!
I feel like stir fry is one of those dishes that everyone has their own take on and can really be anything you want it to be. My particular version took me over 5 years to perfect and HOLY SMOKES is it good! To give credit where credit is most certainly due, the sauce recipe is a variation of JustOneCookbook’s teriyaki sauce. You should totally check out her amazing blog to learn how to make the most delicious Japanese foods! She really does have a gift. Anyway, the alteration I made to her recipe was to change out the regular soy sauce for half regular and then half Korean soy sauce (and also use a less processed sugar). I also add in about a ½ tbsp of cornstarch if I get too impatient waiting for the sauce to thicken in the pan. Besides that, the recipe is my own after a lot of tweaking on the spices, vegetables and cooking methods and temperatures.
The hardest part of this recipe is taking the time to cut up all the ingredients, but once you do that it’s smooth sailing. As always, I recommend preheating your pan prior to adding anything to it. The pan I used is an aluminum stainless steel coated pan. When you preheat the metal, the pores in the metal actually close up providing a non-stick surface. Your oil should just glide on the pan when it is hot enough. I really hope this little tidbit is helpful because no one ever told me this when I was growing up and I can’t tell you how many things I burned in my youth. (Hey, I’m still in my youth…)
Stir fries are always a timeless and easy meal. It’s great for the weeknight when you don’t really know what to make but you have a lot of random vegetables and meats in your fridge. I chose these specific ingredients, but feel free to experiment! That’s half the fun! Have some random bamboo shoots in your cupboard? Toss those bad boys in there! Got some sweet potatoes floating around? I bet those would make a sweet edition to this mix (pun intended). Oh! And even better – this meal can give you the opportunity to cook as a family! You can literally give everyone a job and make it a bonding experience. Any meal that you can deepen your connection with the fam is a fantastic meal. There’s so much time that everyone is glued to their phones/computers/any other electronic device these days that we’re feeling more alone than ever – the intimacy and human relation is all but gone. Set down your devices and try a more traditional hands on approach to life. I promise the memories you make will be better than anything you read online.