Geek Gourmet - Quick Chicken Teriyaki Stir-fry

If you’re like me, you hate to take too much time away from whatever it is you’re working on to make yourself food.

Sadly, this tends to lead to a lot of eating out, or a very unbalanced diet. Fortunately for me, my lovely wife Angie is a health nut (in a good way, I swear! ;) ), and keeps me in line most of the time.

Despite the fact that it does take so much time occasionally, I do enjoy cooking, especially when the result is something as delicious as tonight’s dinner: Teriyaki Chicken stir-fry.

The best part about this meal is that it took me no more than 15 minutes of cooking (plus waiting for my rice cooker to finish), and the result is amazing.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 package pre-cooked chicken slices - I used Hormel Natural Choice Grilled Carved Chicken Breast (long enough name?), which is all natural with not preservatives and all that good stuff. It’s pretty good.

• 1 bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables - I got the kind with snow peas, carrots, and mushrooms, but whatever works.

• Teriyaki Marinade - I highly recommend Soy Vay Island Teriyaki: no corn syrup or preservatives, just a whole bunch of delicious stuff.

• Rice - Whatever you prefer here. I just cook up some rice in my rice cooker, but they have that rice that comes in the microwavable bag that you just stick in for 4 minutes and it’s done. That’s probably fine, too.

• Some sort of oil for the vegetables (optional)

Here’s how to cook it:

If you’re using a rice cooker or cooking your rice on the stove, start that first and then cook the other stuff. If you’re using microwave rice, you can probably wait until the point at which you add the chicken in to start that.

Heat up some oil in a frying pan (or wok, or you can use a sauce pan in a pinch), or don’t, or whatever. If you’re using a non-stick pan oil isn’t strictly necessary. I melted a bit of extra-virgin coconut oil in mine. It smells delicious and adds a hint of coconut flavor to whatever you cook in it. Olive oil or any other reasonable cooking oil will do, of course.

After the oil has warmed up for a couple of minutes, add in the vegetables, and stir them around until they are nice and warm all the way through. At this point I usually drain off the water that comes from the ice on the vegetables.

Next, add in some of the teriyaki marinade. Just enough to coat the vegetables, and stir it around for a couple of minutes.

Now, move all the vegetables to the edge of the pan, leaving some room in the middle. Add the chicken into the space in the middle.

Coat the chicken with a healthy coating of teriyaki marinade and let it cook in a little, then flip the chicken and add a little more marinade. You should see the sauce deliciously soaking into the chicken at this point.

Stir the vegetables and chicken together and, if you feel so inclined, stir in a bit more marinade.

As soon as the teriyaki sauce has thickened to your liking, you are done! Serve yourself up some rice (you remembered to start that earlier, right?), and scoop a helping of your veggies and chicken over the top.

Enjoy! I know I did :)