This salty and sweet stirfry is as flavor-packed as it is with delicious vegetables! It’s a perfect weeknight meal and dying to be your in your next weekly meal prep lineup!
After a weekend of basically being off the rails in terms of my eating habits, by the time Sunday came around, I could just feel my body begging for some actual vegetables. I also was looking for something relatively low in points because I wanted to get back on track and work within the program that’s been working so well for me. I also never tire of Asian inspired food, so stirfry seemed like the perfect thing to make to meet all of my requirements.
Reasons why stirfry is awesome:
- Easy
- Delicious
- You can make it whatever you want it to be
I’ve come across some good home-made sauces and I’ve come across some home-made sauces that I am not too excited about, so I really just wanted to wing it and have this be easy. As in, the only measuring I would be doing is putting a store-bought sauce in a dish so I could accurately track my points. I went up to Family Fare (a Spartan Nash grocery store close to my house) and perused the “international” aisle. I was using my WW App and scanning different sauces to check the point value. TBH, I totally chose this one over a lower point sauce (by one point) because the packaging and the little mascot guy was cute. #marketing. At any rate, I figured I like spicy, I like ginger, and I like teriyaki, so I hoped it would be fine. I took a risk. It happened to pay off. Some people just walk in the light, you know? Side note, though: if you’re looking for spicy, you’ll need to add chili paste or your favorite spicy sauce because even though the name says spicy, it really isn’t very spicy.
Oh, I should also mention that my endorsement of this product is strictly on my own accord and my own opinion. I have not been paid or compensated in any way by The Ginger People to talk about, use, or share anything about this sauce/product. I would hope you would see that since I just admitted that I bought this because the mascot was cute. 🤷🏻♀️ I am going to include a link for Amazon in case you decide you want to try it, and that will be an affiliate link, which will provide a commission if you choose to purchase it using my link. Full disclosure & honesty, right? 😅
I’m gonna let you in on a secret of mine. I’m a little bit … particular. Okay, that was a bad secret. Because, you know, that’s not a secret. I talk all the time about mise en place, and I guess that’s the only annoying part of stirfry. Everything cooks relatively quickly, but the prepping of your veggies is what takes a little bit of time. I’m also particular about the sequence in which things cook because I’m a weirdo about texture, so please don’t hate me.
So here’s the general breakdown of how all of this went down:
Onions, zucchini, chicken, broccoli, snow peas, sauce, carrots & bean sprouts, serve.
Start with the onions because they take a minute to get softened and some color on them. I hate raw onions, and sometimes sautéing them is just not enough for me. I want to get them a little bit caramelized, so I started with them because they’d need to be in the pan on the heat for the longest amount of time. Since starting WW, this has been one of the harder things for me to get over; I want to throw so much butter or olive oil in the pan because they neeeeeeed fat to get all caramelized and amazing, and I’m just so stingy with my points that I wasn’t willing to do it. I have found, however, that some nonstick spray and a few sprays of spray butter did what I needed it to do in this case, so there’s that. TBH, while these cooked, I sliced up my chicken and finished getting all of my other ingredients ready to go.
The next thing I threw in were the zucchini because the same thing is true for zucchini as onions; I am not interested in eating that stuff raw, so it needed to soften up and get some color. Because I’m such a stickler about texture, though, it was important to keep an eye on the zucchini to make sure they didn’t cross over into mushy. Once it’s done, I threw that stuff onto a plate to save it to add back in once it was time to assemble the masterpiece at the end.
I very thinly sliced up two chicken breasts for this one. Normally, I’ll just do a quick, small dice to cube up chicken so it cooks quickly, but I wanted the chicken to look like it would at a restaurant, so I took the tiny bit of extra time to slice the chicken on a bias to get that almost paper-thin slice. To me, it felt like it was worth it. You do you. It also works best if you cook the chicken in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan. Since it’s sliced so thinly, it’ll cook really fast, and I really wanted them to brown and get color. If you don’t really care if it has that seared look to it, you could probably just throw it in and make sure it’s cooked through. Sometimes it’ll let off a lot of liquid if the pan is overcrowded, so you’ll just want to be mindful of that and drain that extra liquid. Once all the chicken is cooked, move it to the same plate you have your zucchini and onion hanging out on. It’ll get thrown back in once we’ve contended with the sauce.
So, I have a secret about the broccoli. I do not like raw broccoli, so to throw it in this pan raw was just not going to work for me. I wanted it to have a little bit of bite, but I didn’t want to spend time softening it up in this pan, so I used my electric steamer to steam my broccoli for about 10-15 minutes so it was still a little bit firm but at least cooked where it would have that mouthfeel I was looking for. I threw it in this screaming hot pan with the snow peas just to get a little color on it. If you don’t want to use an appliance to soften your broccoli like I did (because it’s a little annoying, I know), then I would leave the snow peas out and just steam it in your skillet for a minute. You can do this by having a warm pan, a lid and putting a little bit of water in to create enough steam to get your broccoli steamed to your liking. Or, if you don’t mind raw broccoli, then go on with your bad self and do whatever you want.
My pan was screaming hot by this point, so when I poured the saw in, it bubbled up like crazy and thickened on it’s own. I had some cornstarch and water mixed together as a slurry just in case because this sauce is on the thinner side. It has a good flavor, but I wanted this sauce to coat each piece of this more like a glaze rather than a liquid-y sauce. I did end up using just a little bit of my slurry to get the sauce to the consistency I wanted. My recommendation would be to have a slurry ready and reduce your sauce down to your liking.
Side note: you won’t need a lot of cornstarch and water for your slurry. I used one half cup of Spicy Ginger Teriyaki sauce for this recipe and I added 1.5 teaspoons of cornstarch to 1 teaspoon of water to make almost a paste. Then I slowly added the slurry in and reduced until I got the consistency I wanted.
Finally, once your sauce is perfect, you can just throw all of your veggies and chicken back into your pan! This is the culmination of all of your hard work creating layers of flavor!
When I said I winged this, I am being honest. But because I love you guys and some of you lovebugs messaged me and asked for the recipe for how I made this, I recreated it so I could take pictures. #nerdalert.
I served this originally with regular white rice, and I used 1 cup. I didn’t need one whole cup of white rice, but I was happy I had it. 😂 When I reheated the leftovers for lunch, though, I served it with a mixture of white rice and cauliflower rice, and that’s generally what I do to lower my points when we’re having something like this. I always want a taste of the rice, but the cauliflower rice helps bulk it up without the points. A half of a cup of cauliflower rice with a half of a cup of regular white rice now looks like so much food, and, as a volume eater, I appreciate that.
Spicy Ginger Teriyaki Chicken & Veggie Stirfry
Ingredients
- 1 lb chicken breast (sliced thin)
- 1/2 onion (sliced)
- 1 medium zucchini (chopped into 1 inch sticks)
- 1 cup broccoli (but into bite size florets)
- 1/2 cup carrots (sliced or pre-cut matchsticks)
- 1/2 cup bean sprouts
- 1/2 cup snow peas
- 1/2 cup The Ginger People Simmer Sauce – Spicy Ginger Teriyaki (or any store-bought sauce you like!)
- 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch (optional – use to thicken sauce as needed)
Instructions
- Start by slicing your chicken (or any other protein you decide to use) thin. This will help it cook quickly. Chop your vegetables (onions and zucchini specifically) into about 1 inch slices. It is important that your components are approximately the same size.
- Use nonstick spray in a wok or skillet and coat the pan; drop your onions in to start cooking. Let onions soften and caramelize. Once onions are softened and sort of caramelized, throw in your zucchini pieces. Cook until slightly softened and some color has been reached. Remove from pan and set aside on plate.
- Cook chicken in batches, so as to not overcrowd your pan. Chicken should cook quickly since it is so thinly sliced. Once chicken is cooked through, set aside with onions and zucchini. Do this until all of your chicken is cooked.
- Add broccoli to skillet. I use my electric steamer to steam for about 10 minutes to take some of that crunchy bite out of raw broccoli, but if you don't have a steamer you can steam it in your pan. Toss the broccoli in the pan with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan and cover with a lid, let the broccoli steam for a few minutes, until tender. Once broccoli is steamed to your liking, remove lid and turn heat back up to get some color on your broccoli. If you don't mind broccoli on the more raw side, skip that step and just toss broccoli in the pan to get some color.
- Toss in snow peas and stir around pan to get some color and caramelization. Remove vegetables from the pan and set aside on the same plate as other components.
- Mix 1.5 teaspoons of cornstarch with 1 teaspoon of water to make a slurry/paste. Add stirfry sauce to skillet. Bring to a boil and reduce slightly. Whisk in slurry and let sauce thicken slightly.
- Once sauce is thickened, add veggies and chicken back to the pan and mix into the sauce. Add matchstick carrots and bean sprouts to the mix. Stir until all ingredients are coated in sauce. Serve immediately and enjoy warm!
Notes
- 3 WW Smartpoints for blue & purple plans 💙💜
- Serving size is 1/4 of the recipe
- 7 WW Smartpoints for green plan 💚
- Serving size is 1/4 of the recipe
- Calculated using the WW Recipe Creator.
Did you try this recipe? I’d love to see how it turned out!
Snap a photo and tag @glimpseofgrace on Instagram!
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