Lettuce Wraps

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

3 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp honey

2 tbsp canola oil

1 1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 3/4 inch pieces

Pepper

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 bunch scallions, trimmed and sliced

1 8-oz can sliced water chestnuts, drained

1/4 cup cashews, chopped

1 small head lettuce, leaves separated

Combine the soy sauce and honey in a small bowl; set aside.  Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Season the chicken with 1/2 tsp pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to brown, about 3 minutes.  Lower heat to medium and stir in the garlic and ginger.  Add the scallions and cook for 1 minute.  Stir in the water chestnuts and the soy sauce mixture and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through, about 4 minutes.  Remove from heat and sprinkle with the cashews.  Divide the lettuce leaves onto plates and spoon the chicken into the leaf.  Wrap up and enjoy!

My husband loves lettuce wraps at PF Chang's so he was excited when he found this recipe in an old magazine he was reading at the doctors office.  So he ripped it out and brought it home and it has been a favorite ever since.  These are just about as good as PF Changs and so super easy.  In fact if you do the prep work before hand and have all of the ingredients chopped and ready to add, when you're ready to start doing the cooking, it takes about 10 minutes, max, start to finish.  And it doesn't heat up your kitchen!

Combine your soy sauce and honey in small bowl and set aside.

I like to do all my prep work before I start cooking so next I would grate my ginger root and mince my garlic cloves.  Perhaps, you could get away with just adding the spice ginger here, I don't know, I've never tried.  The smell of real ginger is so amazing that I love this step.  If you've never used actual ginger root before, it's that funny shaped brown thing in the right hand corner of the picture.  I just peel it with my potato peeler and then grate it like cheese on the finer side of the cheese grater.  I also chopped my scallions before I took the picture below.  Scallions is just another name for green onions.  In this picture you can see that I skimped on the scallions and only did 4 or 5 of them.  A whole bunch is a lot tastier and provides more color to the dish.

Then I diced up my water chestnuts.  You can make them as big or as little as you like.  PF Changs fairly well obliterates all of their ingredients (my speculation is that they don't want people like me to figure out what all is in there so that we can duplicate their crowning recipe and blog about it to the whole world - purely conjecture on my part, of course).

I also put my cashews through the chopper to make them nice and fine.

Then I washed my lettuce head real good, removed the core and separated it into several leaves.  For my family I often divide the leaf in two because a lettuce leaf can be really huge to a 4-year old.  The recipe actually calls for Boston or Bibb lettuce.  I don't know what that is so I just use regular old iceberg lettuce but if that means something to you, knock yourself out.

Now it's time to heat up the skillet.

I chop up the chicken just a bit before I put it in the pan. 

 Then start cooking.  As it cooks, I continue to dice it up a bit with my cooking spoon to make the pieces very small.  I like it that way but its not necessary.  They can be as big as you like.

Once the chicken is easy to chop through with the edge of your cooking utensil and is no longer pink inside, it is time to turn the heat down and start adding the other ingredients.  First, add in the garlic and ginger.

Next come the scallions.

Cook for about 1 minute and then add the water chestnuts and your soy sauce mixture.

It will turn a beautiful golden brown color

Cook just a wee bit longer, doesn't take much at this point, then turn off the heat and sprinkle your chopped cashews over the top and mix in.  You can then serve it in the traditional way wrapped in a lettuce leaf in PF style or some of my family prefers to shred their lettuce like a salad and put it over the top.  The sky is the limit.  Enjoy!

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