Chicken Zucchini Stir-Fry Is a Lightning-Fast Weeknight Dinner
Zucchini is one of the easiest vegetables to cook. It’s usually inexpensive at the grocery store and available in mass quantities, and it lasts longer in the refrigerator than many vegetables, so you don’t have to worry about cooking it the minute you get home. It’s also extremely versatile, so you could eat it every day if you wanted to. It can be turned into zucchini “noodles,” or served in salads, but one of the fastest ways to make a quick, vegetable-heavy dinner is to toss it into a stir-fry.
This simple stir-fry of chicken breasts and zucchini has a light sauce made of chicken broth and soy sauce, and calls for two cups of sliced zucchini.
The author suggests that cutting the chicken into very thin slices will make it more tender and delicious. To make it easier to cut such thin slices, the instructions say to freeze the chicken breasts for about an hour before you want to eat them. Then cut against the grain so you get thin slices. The partially frozen chicken is ostensibly easier to cut than raw chicken, and when the slices are so thin, they’ll thaw again by the time you’re ready to cook them.
The author also suggests tenderizing the meat by sprinkling the chicken slices with baking soda for 15 minutes, then rinsing the baking soda off and patting them dry with paper towels.
Cook the prepared chicken slices in a pan until they’re just cooked through, then set them aside and use the same pan to cook some minced garlic and ginger until they’re fragrant. Then fill the pan with a sauce of broth, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, sesame oil, and a bit of cornstarch to help it thicken.
Toss the zucchini slices in the sauce and let them simmer for a couple of minutes until tender, but still slightly crisp. Add the chicken back to the pan and toss all the components together until they’re evenly coated in sauce. It’s ready to eat right away, with some rice on the side. If you have sesame seeds on hand, sprinkle them on top for a nice garnish.
Get the recipe: Chicken Zucchini Stir-Fry from Skinny Taste
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