A DASH of Cooking: Anything Goes Stir-Fry

I made this recipe up because I had a bunch of leftover vegetables to use up from other meals in the fridge, and some frozen meat to use and make space in the freezer. This anything goes stir-fry is for just about…anything!

I frequently have too many leftover vegetables

I will open my fridge up and have like no space to add any more food, but nothing that is quite a meal by itself.  I will have like half an onion, a few celery stalks, a couple carrots that are going to be rubbery by the end of the week, part of a cabbage, or a handful of green beans because those prepacked bags at the store are always just a little overfilled, and occasionally even a couple inches of ginger wrapped in saran wrap and about to dry out or mold if I don’t use it soon.

I am also notorious for buying meat when it’s on sale, cooking some of it then bagging the rest and freezing it for some date down the road and then completely forgetting about it until I am digging around for some frozen tater tots or chicken nuggets a week or two later and am like, ‘oh, right, I have chicken/beef/ground turkey to use. Whoops!’  I’m also really good at planning dinners but forgetting to plan for one night of the week or not planning for enough leftovers and then there is that hole in the cooking schedule where I’m like, ‘Crap. What the heck are we going to eat tonight? And I’m out of freezer nuggets.’

In comes the glorious stir-fry.  Stir-fry that has the power to combine all those random vegetables in your fridge and some random freezer meat and make a meal worth second helpings of.  Stir-fry so quick to make that it will appear that you must have been planning this meal all along, and not just from the time you got home and started speed-defrosting some meat.  Stir-fry so good you will be questioning why you keep ordering takeout from that so-so teriyaki/thai/chinese/can’t-decide-which-asian-it-is-so-it-just-serves-everything restaurant down the street.  Yeah, it’s that good. It beats that indecisive Asian place hands down, all day, any day.

What’s the Catch

Now, I’m not saying you can’t or won’t still order from the indecisive Asian restaurant down the street (let’s admit it, their gyoza and egg rolls are both fire and they may be made with crack, but that’s a risk you’re willing to take so you can have that fried goodness).  I am saying that you might be ordering from there a lot less often and choosing a much healthier alternative for yourself and your family.  There are however a few things you do need to have on hand consistently or be willing to stock if you are going to pull off this mid-week dinner magic without scrolling through Grubhub’s delivery list sorted from quickest to slowest and skipping all the coffee stands and convenience stores that somehow make it into the list of options to order from (I’m sorry, coffee shops nor a gas station convenience stores should not be something that comes up in the Grubhub restaurant delivery scroll). To be able to make my stir-fry  recipe on a whim you will always need:

• Garlic
• Ginger
• Soy Sauce
• Mirin
• Chili Garlic Sauce
• Hoisin Sauce
• Sesame Oil

These are quintessential to create the unifying sauce for the stir-fry and are something I therefore always stock in my kitchen.  As far as what else goes in the stir-fry, it’s pretty flexible, but I recommend including the following to also develop the flavor:

• Carrots
• Celery
• Onions (green onion or yellow onions or even a shallot work well for this)

What works well in this Stir-fry

So once you have your basics, you can pretty much add in whatever else you want or need to use in your kitchen. Things I have used or would consider adding into my stir-fry combinations are:

• Peppers, either bell or other mildly spicy
• Cabbage
• Green beans
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Pea pods
• Swiss chard
• Collard greens
• Eggplant
• Bean sprouts

For proteins, you could pretty much use any of the following:

• Chicken
• Pork
• Beef
• Tofu
• Seitan
• Tempeh
• Chickpeas (yes, this is a veg, but it’s also a great protein)

The recipe I will present is what I am showing in the photos.  Feel free to sub in the ingredients I’ve listed as options for any of the veg and I’m sure you will have a very delicious stir-fry and much emptier fridge by the time you are done cooking. Enjoy!

How to Make the Anything Goes Stir-fry

Ingredients

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 inch of peeled ginger, minced
• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/8-1/4″ thick pieces
• 1-2 celery stalks, sliced on a sharp diagonal into 1/8-1/4″ thick pieces
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped. Or 2-3 green onions, white and green parts chopped.
• 1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 to 1 1/2 lbs of chicken or other protein. (I slice my chicken or other meats extremely thin, no more than 1/8″ thick)
• 1/2 cabbage head
• 1 head of broccoli, chopped
• 2-3 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2-3 tablespoons of mirin
• 2 tablespoons chili garlic sauce
• 2-3 tablespoons Hoisin Sauce (use 3 if you prefer a sweeter stir-fry flavor)
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup dry roasted unsalted peanuts or cashews (optional)
• 2-3 dashes of sesame oil

Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the chicken and cook until lightly browned.

2. Immediately add the garlic, ginger, onion, celery, and carrots to the pan with the chicken and cook until the onion and celery is just becoming translucent.

3. Add the soy sauce and mirin while stirring the chicken and vegetables until everything is incorporated. Be careful of spatter while doing this.

4. Reduce heat to medium and carefully fold in the cabbage and broccoli. Allow to cook for 2-3 minutes while stirring occasionally.

5. Finally, mix in the chili garlic sauce, Hoisin sauce, and sesame oil and allow to cook 1-2 minutes longer.

6. Remove from heat, and fold in any peanuts or cashews if using. Serve immediately.

This dish is also fabulous if you boil a bundle of udon noodles and fold that in to make a yaki udon. I love those big fat noodles more than soba noodles, so I almost always use those verses soba, but you could also use soba noodles if that’s what you prefer.