By popular demand (ok, for Em and Alyssa), here is the infamous Chicken Lettuce Wrap “recipe”. Now if you haven’t realized yet, I don’t generally follow recipes (same with Alfie), I am one of those pinch here, dash there, stir and taste kind of cookers, which makes it tricky to share recipes. But most of the recipes I do are really easy and pretty tough to mess up, so here we go…
Ingredients:
Ground Chicken (or turkey works well too)
Sesame Garlic Sauce (the Wegmans version works well too)
Chili Garlic Sauce aka Asian Hot Sauce
White Vinegar
Spicy mustard
Soy Sauce
2 Garlic Cloves
Water chestnuts, diced
1 Head of Iceberg Lettuce
First off, Alf and I have made these a TON and it was such a pain in the rear trying to get large enough lettuce leaves to really dig into the meal. So finally, when we were going to make a huge batch for a party we gave good ole’ PF Changs a holla and to ask if we could buy their lettuce cups, hoping they would share their secret, and they did!! So first fill a LARGE bin or bowl or if your sink is partitioned plug half of it and fill it with ice and water to create an ice bath. Next take your head of lettuce and with the core facing down, slam it onto the table… like SLAM IT. This will make the core “pop” and easily removable. Then place that de-cored head of lettuce into the ice bath to soak. Got it? Let us move on… hahahah get it?? Lol pun…lame, I know.
Next get a deep pan and drizzle some olive oil in it. Place two minced garlic cloves into it (or 1 tbsp of pre-minced garlic), once it is aromatic…oo big word… add in your chicken. As your chicken is cooking, get your water chestnuts. You can buy them diced, but then do some extra chops to make them even finer. *Side note: I am NOT a fan of water chestnuts, like I typically will pick them out of my meal, BUT this MAKES the dish and if you look very closely at PF Changs they in fact have water chestnuts in theirs as well.* Ok, go back to your chicken and make sure it is cooking, and break it apart like you would ground beef. If you have one of these,
it will make your ground meat cooking experience a whole lot easier
Once the chicken is cooked, add in your water chestnuts. Then add in a good drizzle of the Sesame Garlic sauce… enough to flavor your chicken. To make a little go a long way, use less Sesame Garlic and add in some soy Sauce. Tasting as you go, to make sure you like the flavor. Let it simmer to mesh all the flavors for a minute or 2, then take it off the heat.
Now to make the sauce, or Alfie Juice as we call it…
In your own bowl, start with a dollop of sesame garlic sauce. Add in some soy sauce, enough to dilute it. Next determine how spicy you want it. The Asian hot sauce is HOT, so use VERY little. Add a bit to the sauce. In the event you made it too spicy, vinegar is typically used to cut the heat, so add some of that and then reflavor it (since it may taste too tangy from the vinegar) with more soy sauce or more sesame garlic sauce. Alfie likes to put in some spicy mustard, which is also an option, but that is a personal taste preference.
Now go back to your beautiful head of soaking lettuce. The leaves should fall off far easier now ( you are supposed to soak it for an hour, but really who has that time??) Remove some leaves and dry it between some paper towels or a dish towel. Once dry, fill with your chicken, drizzle on some Alfie Juice and get to eating!! BUT WAIT!! What about those white crunchy noodles?!? Well we have tried high and lo how to replicate those crispy white noodles they have, but can’t for the life of us figure out them bad boys! So instead we use crispy chow mein noodles.
Sprinkle a few of those on and mmm. BANGARANG! (10 points if you can guess the movie that is from…)
Enjoy!
