As much as I like to try out new recipes, I always fall back on simple stir-fry dishes for many of our family dinners. When time is short (and it always seems like everything needs to get done right around the dinner hour), it's easy to stir-fry up some meat, throw in some vegetables or tofu, and add a little sauce to bring it all together. Meanwhile, the rice cooker bubbles away and provides the rest of the meal.
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| Ground chicken cooked in hoisin sauce, topped with scallions and peanuts, served over rice |
If stir-fry "recipes" are my secret weapon for putting a quick meal on the table, then I must have certain Asian pantry ingredients in my arsenal. The very basics include soy sauce and sesame oil; beyond that, I'd say oyster sauce is my secret weapon. I like to stir it together with some water and cornstarch - then pour it into the pan with what I'm cooking, and I have an instant sauce for my stir-fry.
Today though, I'm thinking about another Asian pantry sauce that I like to keep on hand and use for both cooking and as a dipping sauce. It's hoisin sauce, or what translates into "seafood sauce" in Chinese. It doesn't actually have any seafood in it. Some call hoisin sauce the Asian barbecue sauce but I'd describe it as a thick, sweet sauce that has a certain umami flavor to it. It's made with soybeans, sweet potatoes, sesame seeds, and sugar, to name a few ingredients.
Hoisin sauce is often used as a dipping sauce, slathered onto the wrapper or bun for Peking duck, for instance. We like to put some on Asian fish balls. When I was growing up, I loved drowning some steamed rice noodles with hoisin sauce for a snack or meal. The sweetness is a little addicting! I don't use it all the time but if you're looking for a quick Asian flavor boost for your stir-fry and you're in the mood for some sweetness, this is a good option (I particularly like to use it to make a sauce for diced chicken and cashew nuts).
I often make stir-fry with ground turkey because my son loves it. For a little variety, I also like to use ground chicken. This stir-fry dish here is simply ground chicken cooked with some grated garlic, ginger, and scallions. A simple mixture of hoisin, soy sauce, water, and sesame oil makes for a quick sauce. I topped it with some crunchy peanuts and served it over rice but it makes a great filling for lettuce wraps. If I had some shiitake mushrooms on hand, it would be great in this dish, as would some shredded carrots. That's the beauty of a stir-fry; you can add so many things to it and use what's lingering in your fridge.
Repurpose leftovers...and make spring rolls!
I was watching the Pioneer Woman this weekend and the show was called "one thing leads to another" and that's what I had in mind here. I'm saving some leftovers to make something else. Now, speaking of leftovers, I've come to truly appreciate it to the point of making sure I make too much so that I'll have leftovers! When I was making this Asian chicken stir-fry dish, I thought I'd reserve some and use it as a filling for...spring rolls.
You see...I've wanted to make spring rolls at home for ages now. This is actually my inaugural batch. Years ago, I'd always opt for the crispy, fried kind but being more health-conscious in recent years, I now go for and appreciate the soft kind of spring rolls that you'd typically find filled with shrimp, vegetables, and some thin vermicelli noodles. Unfortunately, the ones I order at restaurants are often hard and dried out so making some at home, to eat fresh, has been a goal.
So right in time for Fall, I made "Spring" roll...but I think this warm version makes a nice snack/meal at any time of the year. It took me this long to make spring rolls because they always seemed a bit of a project, requiring you to steam shrimp and chop up/prep the various fillings to do the job. Well, I had the idea to go for a bit of a short-cut, by using some appropriate leftovers as a filling, when I saw this post that uses leftover peanut noodles as the primary ingredient for the rolls. I thought it was a great idea, and I could picture lots of possibilities. In short, re-think spring roll fillings! (Though maybe I'm the only one who'd never thought of the possibility!) Repurposing leftovers like this cuts the prep time down and makes for tasty results.
So for my shortcut rendition, I used some leftover ground chicken in hoisin sauce we had the night before as the primary filling in my spring rolls. I added vermicelli noodles (that only require a few minutes soak in hot water, which I then used to soak my wrappers) and some shredded carrots (another easy task thanks to my julienne peeler). Best part - I made the easiest, 2-ingredient dipping sauce by stirring a little bit of warm water into hoisin sauce to thin it out. It was fast and very tasty!
