Garlic Chicken Stir-Fry

As with most of the country, we are grappling with the mighty, ominous polar vortex. Cold weather like this calls for something like slow cooker pot roast. Yum. After all, it is SUPER COLD out here. In Spokane, this would've been considered a nice winter day (sunny, high of 33, no ice on the road), but this here is Leezy-anna, and oh boy, we are just not used to this. Our local 6:00 news devoted almost the entirety of its broadcast to discussion of said cold weather. (Yet no one bats an eye when it's absurdly hot for 3 months straight.) What they should have done is plopped this map on the screen to give their viewers some perspective.

C'mon Florida...I thought we were in this together. 

Irregardlessly, it's cold, and some nice cold weather food is in order.

Or we can have stir-fry! Steph will tell you that whether it's cold, hot, rainy, or sunny, I am more than happy to have an Asian dish. She is less enthusiastic about it, which made me much more surprised when she volunteered to cook this one while I managed the kids. In this recipe, you marinate some chicken, cook some veggies, then the chicken and mix it all together. Serve with white rice. In our recipe, we did not use the mushrooms. Neither of us like them very much. We used green pepper instead.

We served this dish with white rice from our rice maker. I love our rice maker because it makes the sticky white rice you would get at an actual Chinese restaurant or sushi joint. Not surprisingly, I loved the dish. Steph and Connor did as well. Connor ate a whole bunch of the rice and sauce. He ate his and kept asking for bites of mine.

Makes 4 servings

12 oz skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 cup water
3 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce (we used regular)
1 tbsp rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp vegetable oil
10 green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup thinly sliced fresh mushrooms
12 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped (we used the minced stuff in the jar)
1/2 cup sliced water chestnuts
2 cups hot cooked rice

1) Cut chicken to 1/2 inch pieces. Place in resealable plastic bag. For marinade, stir together water, soy sauce, and vinegar. Pour over chicken; seal bag. Marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Drain chicken, reserving the marinade. Stir cornstarch into reserved marinade; set aside.

2) Pour oil into a wok or large skillet. (If necessary, add more oil during cooking.) Heat over medium-high heat. Add green onions, mushrooms, and garlic to wok; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until tender. Remove veggies from wok.

3) Add chicken to wok; cook and stir for 3-4 minutes or until no longer pink. Push chicken from center. Stir marinade mixture and add to center of wok. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Return cooked veggies to wok. Add water chestnuts. Cook and stir about 1 minute more. Serve with rice.