Fitness Friday :: Teriyaki Glazed Chicken Stir-Fry
One of my favorite new discoveries is Clean Eating Magazine. Tagline: Improving your life one meal at a time. (I would like to adopt this as my personal tagline, thank you.) I picked up a copy before our 4-day {not} spring-break stay at the local Embassy Suites, while our hardwood floors got all sanded and polyurethaned. By the end of the weekend, I had dozens of recipes marked to try. This was one of them.
I love me a good stir-fry. My problem has always been getting that perfect blend of flavors to make the dish pop, without relying too heavily on salt. Enter this homemade teriyaki sauce. I’m normally not a huge teriyaki fan–but this one? Light, sweet and bursting with flavor.
I did some tweaking of the recipe to fit our tastes (omitted the shrimp, switched out the baby corn cobs for real corn, added sesame seeds). I encourage you to do some tweaking of your own. That’s what makes cooking fun. And also makes you feel like you should have your own cooking show. As we all know, you should.
This dinner takes only 20 minutes from start to finish (a little longer if you’re a slow chopper). And served over a bed of steamed rice, you are out the door in under 400 calories!
Win. Win. Win.
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Teriyaki Glazed Chicken Stir Fry
Prep and cook time: About 2o min
Serves 6
Ingredients:
3 tbsp grape seed oil or safflower oil, divided
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized cubes
(Clean Eating Recipe includes 12 oz shrimp also. I don’t like shrimp, so I omitted. But if you like it–go crazy with the shrimp!)
1 tsp sesame oil
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and sliced
4 cups broccoli florets (I use frozen)
1 cup frozen corn (the recipe calls for baby corn cobs, which would have been delish, but I couldn’t find them at my grocery store)
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 hot red chile pepper, seeded and thinly sliced (optional–I omitted)
toasted sesame seeds
Teriyaki Sauce
1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup mirin rice cooking wine (I could not find this, so I used white cooking wine)
3 tbsp reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp raw honey
2 tbsp tapioca starch
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Instructions:
1. Prepare Teriyaki sauce: In a medium bowl, combine all the sauce ingredients and whisk until combined and honey is dissolved. (That was easy, right???) Set aside.
2. In a large wok or skillet on high, heat 2 tbsp* grape seed oil (*or 1 tbsp if you are adding shrimp), swirling bottom of pan. Add chicken and sesame oil, cooking until brown (about 3 min). Transfer to a bowl and set aside. (*If you are using shrimp, reserve 1 tbsp grape seed oil from chicken and use to cook the shrimp in the skillet, about 2 min. Then transfer shrimp to chicken bowl and set aside.)
3. Keep skillet on high heat and add remaining 1 tbsp grape seed oil. Add bell pepper and broccoli and stir-fry until tender-crisp. (about 1 min or a bit longer if using frozen)
4. Return chicken and any juices to skillet. Add corn and teryiaki sauce. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and cook, tossing occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, all vegetables are tender-crisp and sauce has thickened slightly (about 3-5 min)
5. Scoop over steamed brown rice. Sprinkle with scallions and sesame seeds.
Nutrition Info (Per Clean Eating Magazine original recipe, written with 12 oz shrimp added)
Serving size: 1 1/4 cups
Calories: 280
Total Fat: 5 g
Saturated Fat 1 g
Monounsaturated Fat: 1 g
Polyunsaturated Fat: 3 g
Carbs: 23 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sugar: 9 g
Protein: 33 g
Soduim: 454 g
Cholesterol: 130
That looks so yummy! We love chicken & teriyaki in our house, so I’m going to have to try this one! Thanks for sharing and happy friday!
Thanks Amy! Let me know if you make it and how you like it!! Happy Friday to you, too.
When I started my search for optimal nutrition I started with clean eating and this was one of my favorite magazines.
Sidenote. I’m 99% sure I’m going to start P90X again next week! Doing that 90 days was when I was the happiest with my cross training and most pleased by the results. What have you been doing for strength training?
Weird…I had never even noticed this magazine before. After my first issue, I fell in total love and subscribed. And that’s sayin’ something because I am a magazine minimalist.
P90X is awesome. I actually felt my best during and after X2. For the last few months, I’ve been doing a mixture of P90X, X2 and TurboFire. But I have not been nearly as committed as I’d like, probably only doing 4-5 days per week, and some of those days not the full workout. Partly because I also did 2 cleanses during that time and it’s so exhausting to cleanse. Partly because the schedule I wrote out for myself included all the TurboFire workouts, and I realized after about 3 days that I didn’t like most of them! Partly because when the weather gets nicer, I’d much rather be outside than in my basement strength training (and unlike you, I don’t do double workouts) And partly because I’m getting bored with the same Tony Horton workouts and find myself lip syncing to all his jokes. True story.
That said, I am not sure what I’m doing next. I am neither thrilled nor disgusted at my fitness level right now. It’s just okay. I haven’t pushed very hard, simply maintained.
I’m sort of okay with that. Sort of want to get back to that place where I can easily crank out 30 push-ups or run a few miles and not be fatigued and sore the next day. But the other part of me likes a little reprieve from the constant striving for better–even against myself.
Sandy, I love that you can write about a recipe and still entertain me. How do you do it!?!?! You should be on TV. Then I could PVR you everyday just like Rachael Ray. I love her. She’s my girl crush.
This looks yummy. And my picky family would totally eat it. Except they would want vermicelli. Which would also be yummy I think.
What is the world crazy weird grocery store do you shop at that you couldn’t find baby corn?!?!?!?! That is so bizarre! Depending on the store I find it near the canned corn (often on the top or bottom shelf) or usually in the Asian Foods section. Next to the water chestnuts and bamboo shoots. mmmm water chestnuts would be good in this too… But I have never ever not been able to find the corn.
Oh and another P90X side note….my FB comment is already coming to bite me. My friend Amanda joined me at my workout yesterday. We did Tabata training. So Hard. Afterward (all sweating and groaning about her legs and hips hurting already) she looked me in the eye and said “You could TOTALLY do P90X. Totally” I guess maybe I should try it sometime. Maybe I know someone I could order it from….. It’s pricy, but cheaper than personal training at the gym….. 🙂
Anyway – Love ya. Have a great weekend.
I would love to have a cooking show. Except I can’t talk and do ANYTHING else. So I would be all–“Wait…I have to measure this….hold on….shoot! I forgot to set the timer!!! Did I add the salt yet? Does anyone know IF I ADDED THE FREAKING SALT???”
And I would suck.
Yes, you could totally do P90X. Anyone can. You can adapt it to any fitness level. Truly. People do it every day. And yes…much, much cheaper than a trainer.
I can hook you up.
And yes…the baby corn. What the heck?? I looked in all those places, plus frozen foods. We have a very extensive grocery store here. They sell everything. I don’t know. A baby corn shortage, maybe. Or I am blind. Probably the latter.
I think I will make this. The rice wine, I have that already. We have a Chinatown in Chicago and that’s where I picked it up. I wonder what you can substitute for tapioca starch? I would hate to buy it and never use it.
I did a quick Google search and found that the tapioca starch/flour is simply used as a thickener. So you can substitute corn starch or potato starch. Alternatively, you can use the tapioca starch in gravy or soups or whatever you might use cornstarch.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/tapioca-flour-substitute.html