ginger sauce | Jenna's Everything Blog

Good morning, lovely friends! Somehow, it’s Monday again. But that’s okay. We just came off a fabulous weekend with my sister Erica and her husband, I’m starting a yoga class tonight with my favorite teacher at Broadway Armory Park, I’m about to imbibe a steaming mug of mint tea, and I have exciting things to share with you this week–starting with this chicken.

What to say about this chicken?

It’s great. I made it on a whim. I was committed to bringing a dish to a women’s gathering at our church, and as I was browsing the incredible food blog that is Kayotic Kitchen, this chicken sandwich caught my eye. I’m so glad that Kay highlighted it in her Superbowl-friendly recipes post, because I might not have found it otherwise. It’s simple (not at all labor intensive, seriously), delicious, and I was asked for the recipe.

There’s no greater compliment than being asked for the recipe, in my book.

The sauce is richly complex, satisfying, the right amount of vinegary and sweet, and of course adjustable to each person’s individual taste. So make this for a party! It’s amazing.

I made a few changes–green pepper instead of red, ginger sauce for added sweetness, sriracha, more chicken (the ratio of sauce was a little high), and the results were delectable. I will now show you how it all went down!

Ingredients

(Serves 10-12)

7-8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 large onion
2 TBS butter
1 bell pepper (red or green)
6-8 garlic cloves
1 serrano or jalapeño chili, seeds and membrane removed
1 cup ketchup
3 TBS sriracha
1 1/2 cups water
3 TBS brown sugar
2 TBS ginger syrup
1/2 cup apple cider or white wine vinegar
2 TBS Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp mustard powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 squeeze fresh lemon juice
2 tsp salt, to taste
Tabasco, to taste
Pepper, to taste

Mince the onion, bell pepper, garlic, and chili.

Heat the butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add the onion and cook for 15 minutes, until it’s starting to caramelize.

Add the bell pepper, garlic and chili and continue to cook for another 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the veggies are softened.

Season those veggies with salt and pepper as they cook.

Whisk together the remaining ingredients (except for the chicken).

Give the sauce a taste if you want, though the flavors will change and deepen when it cooks.

If you don’t have a certain ingredient (like ginger sauce), don’t sweat it–this is a flexible sauce. A forgiving sauce. A sauce that’s begging to be personalized.

Add the ketchup mixture to the pot with the veggies and bring ‘er to a boil.

Add the chicken breasts, lower the heat, cover the pot and simmer for 20 minutes.

Don’t overcook the chicken, or it will dry out! Overcooked chicken is the worst, man, especially once you understand the full potential of tender, perfectly cooked fowl flesh.

When the chicken is done, remove it from the pot and set it aside to cool a little on a plate.

Turn the heat up to medium and simmer the sauce for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally so that it doesn’t burn to the bottom, until it’s very thick. Like dees!

And if you burn it a little (I certainly did–you can see the blackened chunks if you look closely), it only adds to the smokiness of the barbecue flavor.

Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning to your liking.

Shred the chicken with two forks . . .

. . . and mix the chicken and sauce together.

My chicken went straight into this lovely plastic container, for transportation to our women’s ministry gathering.

Oh man, my mouth is watering.

Serve! On a plate, over rice, in a sandwich—you’ll love it.

The chicken is so amazingly tender and flavorful.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Pulled Chicken

This stirfry came together on a humble Monday evening–a week ago yesterday, in fact. Normally my husband cooks on Monday nights because my yoga class conveniently interferes with my regular dinner-making time. Heh heh. However, the class happened to be cancelled because my teacher was still traveling back from the Superbowl. And I never thought I’d say this–but I’m so glad yoga was cancelled! Because it allowed me to make this stirfry. And while I love stirfries and have made many in my day, the sauce in this one quickly topped the charts as the awesomest.

Adapted from Kayotic Kitchen’s Pork in Sweet Soy Sauce, this stirfry packs a flavor that had me drinking up the sauce at the end of the meal. It’s very easy to make, and I can promise you will love it.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

2 lbs boneless pork chops

5 TBS peanut oil, divided

4 TBS dark soy sauce

4 TBS light soy sauce

4 TBS ginger syrup (‘ginger juice’)

6 TBS sriracha (sweet chili sauce)

2 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp curry powder

1 large onion

2 bell peppers (1 red, 1 green)

5 cloves garlic

3 green onions

Now there’s a lot of prep work up front, but if you own a sharp knife and listen to some music, the chopping and mincing and dicing will get done in no time at all.

So! Slice the bell peppers into thin strips and then halve the strips.

Halve the onion lengthwise, then crosswise like so . . .

. . . and slice it into quarter-rings.

Set the vegetables aside.

Now grab your cloves of garlic. You can loosen the papery skin by pressing down hard with the flat of your knife, but it’s easier to just bash them a couple times with a can.

The skin comes off so easily that way! Really–the Pioneer Woman taught me.

Mince the garlic, set it aside.

Slice the pork, and set it aside.

Hint: at the end there will be a quiz asking how many times the instructions ‘set aside’ have been repeated. The winner gets a garbanzo bean.

Grab the green onions and dice them–set them aside too.

Now let’s make that killer sauce. Assemble the ranks!

Combine the dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, ginger syrup, sriracha, brown sugar, chili powder and curry powder, and mix.

Set aside.

On a side note, my ginger syrup was labeled ‘ginger juice,’ but it was thick like a syrup. The ginger flavor is unbelievable. I picked up my bottle at Golden Pacific Market, but I’m sure you could find some at almost any Asian grocery store. And if you don’t have any Asian grocery stores in your neck of the woods, you can even make your own!

So now that everything is chopped and minced and diced and mixed, we’re finally ready to fry! Heat half the peanut oil in a wok or large (12”) cast iron skillet. When hot, add the vegetables and fry for 5 minutes.

They will continue to cook later, so just let them go until they’re starting to get tender and browned. Remove them and reserve them for later.

See? “Reserve them for later.” I totally avoided using “set aside” again–I’m tricky like that. So if you want that garbanzo bean, you’d better watch your back.

Heat another 1 TBS oil in the same skillet. When the skillet is very hot, add half the pork. It’s best to fry the pork in two batches, because an overcrowded pan will cause the pork to steam-cook instead of truly frying. Stirfry the first batch for 3 minutes, then remove it to a plate. FYI, you want the skillet to be so hot that the pork browns pretty much immediately, on first contact with the pan, like so:

Heat the remaining oil, and when it’s très, très hottée, add the rest of the pork. Stirfry for 3 minutes, then add the set aside pork and garlic.

Fry for another minute, stirring frequently. Confession: I did all the pork at one go, and you can see in the bubbles of the picture above that my pork did not fry correctly. Thankfully it was still delicious, though mark my words friends: it could have been deliciouser.

Okay, time to add the vegetables back in . . .

. . . and the sauce.

Give it a good stir.

Now believe me–it will seem like waaay too much sauce. But it’s not. It’s all going to turn out alright in the end. In fact, it will turn out more than alright: it will send you on a rocket to the moon.

Bring it all to a boil, and cook over high heat for about 5 minutes.

The sauce should thicken during this time and start sticking to the pork and veggies. If it’s not thick enough, mix 2-3 tsp of cornstarch with some water, stir, and add the slurry to the sauce.