Chicken Broccoli Stir-fry...

Of all things lately, I don't think I ever expected to hear Jeff say "So, we haven't had broccoli in a while... how about we work that in this week?". I just gave a sly grin and replied "Really? Did the green vegetable police come and issue you an ultimatum?". Truly, I kid... and he isn't that picky anymore, but it just isn't that often he actually requests vegetables - I'm am very happy to oblige!

I thought about just serving him a heaping plate of broccoli since he didn't ask for anything else to see what kind of reaction I would get, but I don't want to go and deter him from keeping this up! Instead, I ended up making this speedy Chicken Broccoli Stir-fry for us to have.

For the chicken in this dish, you could use a pound of chicken tenders if you don't want to mess with cutting up the meat, but all we did was slice a few boneless and skinless chicken breasts into strips. Tenders are typically on the pricer side, but they would shave a few minutes off and save on clean up. We took those strips and tossed them into a fiery pan that had a slick of oil covering the bottom. Since they are fairly thin already, it didn't take more than a couple minutes for them to take on a light golden hue - once that happened, we whisked them out and set them on a plate before continuing on. After adding a bit more oil, we slipped three cloves of minced garlic and a couple teaspoons worth of fresh grated ginger into the pan and less than a minute later I felt their warm aromas tickle my nose. Broccoli florets and thin strips of carrot went into the mix and were left to mingle in the oil for a short time before the sauce was added.

Broth, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, crushed red pepper and a sprinkle of cornstarch made up that sauce. Once added in, along with the partially cooked chicken, we covered the skillet and left the sauce to bubble - this finished cooking the chicken through, allowed the vegetables to become crisp-tender and activated the cornstarch to thicken the sauce. This is quite saucy, which made it a perfect vehicle to serve with a pasta to bulk it up! We used regular linguine, but a nutty whole-wheat linguine would be a fine pairing with this.

If pasta didn't sound good, serving this over a bed of nutty brown rice would be ideal to soak up that liberal sauce. The only change I think I would make to this would be to bump up the crushed red pepper to a full half teaspoon or so to give it a more rounded heat level. I was temped to up the garlic and ginger a bit, but they lingered through each bite enough that I'm glad I didn't fiddle with that. Hearty and a snap to make, Jeff got his fill of broccoli (I even caught him fishing into the leftovers for a couple more bites of the veggie!) and we both agreed we'd love to have this again.

Recipes
Chicken Broccoli Stir-fry