Cashew Chicken

Americanized Chinese food, like you find at restaurants like Rice Bowl, can be daunting to make for some. This recipe doesn't imitate the exact taste of a restaurant-style cashew chicken, but it's pretty good! Plus the breading isn't all that great for you anyway. The secret to the sweetness of this dish is the Teriyaki sauce. I know, I know, that's not a Chinese ingredient. But it gives a distinct sweetness to the food, making it pretty delicious. Fair warning: the sodium content is pretty high because of this. You can experiment with adding white wine vinegar to give it more of the tangy sweet sauce instead of the Teriyaki.

An ingredient that is different in this is canola oil instead of vegetable oil, which is normally used in cooking Chinese cuisine. Canola oil consists of omega-3 fatty acids, versus vegetable oil that consists omega-6. There have been studies that suggest that the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is very high in Western diets, and reducing the ratio have benefits.

I started cooking today with putting the rice in the rice cooker. When I first started cooking, I always forgot to do that leading to me having to wait for the rice after everything is done! That's just silly. So, a general rule--start the rice right away and start the pasta right away. Thinking ahead is very important in cooking efficiently so that you are not wasting a lot of time trying to play catch-up.

After the rice, I cooked the chicken. When you are cooking chicken, you need to make sure that there is no pink. Chicken can harbor salmonella and cause a serious G.I. infection.

After the chicken was white on all sides, I added the veggies, soy sauce and Teriyaki sauce. This Tiger-Tiger brand I bought from Whole Foods worked really well! 

The cook-time should be approximately 25 minutes. Enjoy with a side or rice and egg rolls (I will be blogging about this another time).

I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Note: I don't use a lot of salt in my ingredients, and always say "to taste" because everybody likes it different.

Cashew Chicken and Eggrolls

Prep-time: 10 minuets
Cook-time: 20-25 minutes
Nutritional facts: See image on right
Serves: 6

Ingredients

• Protein
• 1 lb. Chicken - Boneless, skinless, cubed
• Carbohydrates
• 3 cups of Rice (Jasmine rice used in this case. I did not use this in calculation of nutritional value. The following are the values for White Rice, cooked, per cup: 180 calories, 42 g carbohydrates, 3 g protein)
• Veggies
• 1 can Chinese Stir-Fry Vegetables (I used Tiger-Tiger Brand from Whole Foods)
• 1 cup Edameme (Soybeans)
• 1/2 cup Shitaake mushrooms
• 1 cup cabbage
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp. freshly grated ginger
• Spices, Oils and Sauces
• Salt (to taste; I used 2 tsp for nutritional calculation)
• Pepper (to taste; I used 1/4 tsp)
• 1 tbsp Light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Teriyaki sauce
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• Other
• 1 cup Cashews - dry roasted, no salt

Directions

1. Cook rice in a rice cooker, microwave, or in a saucepan
2. Heat canola oil in a large saucepan or a wok. Add garlic and ginger and cook until the aromas are released.
3. Add chicken and add salt and pepper. Cook until chicken breast is white on all sides, approximately 7 minutes
4. Drain the excess water.
5. Add veggies, soy sauce, and Teriyaki sauce to the mixture
6. Cook until the chicken is no longer pink
7. Serve with rice