Chinese Lettuce Wraps with Chicken
Written by kmcgra
Sunday, 21 September 2008
A simple dish that contains just a few ingredients, are Chinese lettuce wraps made with chicken. Lettuce wraps have been a popular mainstay at PF Chang's China Bistro for some years now, PF Chang's is a higher end national Chinese restaurant chain.
It has been several years since I have eaten at PF Chang's, but with this short list of ingredients, you can come pretty close to their recipe in your own home. All you need are the following ingredients: chicken breast, a can of water chestnuts(drained), a can of bamboo shoots(drained), ginger root, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chili-garlic sauce (optional), and a cucumber. They also use black fungus, which is available at most oriental grocers, but I am not a big fan of mushrooms, so I leave them out.
If memory serves me correctly, you get a choice of several different sauces when you sample the real dish at PF Chang's. For mine, I use just one sauce. We have no set recipe for this, but just a few general instructions on how to prepare the dish. We make all kinds of variations of the dish. Once we stir fried our chopped chicken breast in regular old BBQ sauce, and that came out really good. If you want the official dish, and are lucky enough to have a PF Chang's in your general vicinity, go give the real thing a try, and see how close you can get.
For the Filling:
A couple of chicken breasts
ginger root
1 can of Bamboo Shoots (drained)
1 can of Water Chestnuts (drained)
1 Cucumber
1 Lettuce - Cupped style lettuce is best.
cooked rice (optional)
Sauce:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1/2 cup water
A dash or two of chili-garlic sauce (optional)
To start, peel a some ginger root, and cut about 4 1/8 inch slices. Heat a frying pan on medium high with a few tablespoons of cooking oil and fry the ginger. Let the ginger burn a bit, so that the flavor of the ginger works its way into the oil. Add the chicken breast and fry for several minutes on each side until golden brown. when it is done, set it aside to cool, but keep the oil.
While the chicken cooks, drain the cans of water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, and place them in a food processor. Give them a good chop, so that they are minced. Do not make them into mush, just a decent chop , that is the same consistency of the PF Chang wraps.
Slice a cucumber into one quarter inch julienne strips. Prepare the lettuce cups.
Mince about another 1/4 cup of ginger and add it to the water chestnut and bamboo shoot combination and mix.
After the chicken is done, mince it up into about 1/4 inch cubes, or a bit smaller. After the chicken is cubed, put back in the pan on (or wok) high heat, give it a good stir fry.
It has been several years since I have eaten at PF Chang's, but with this short list of ingredients, you can come pretty close to their recipe in your own home. All you need are the following ingredients: chicken breast, a can of water chestnuts(drained), a can of bamboo shoots(drained), ginger root, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chili-garlic sauce (optional), and a cucumber. They also use black fungus, which is available at most oriental grocers, but I am not a big fan of mushrooms, so I leave them out.
If memory serves me correctly, you get a choice of several different sauces when you sample the real dish at PF Chang's. For mine, I use just one sauce. We have no set recipe for this, but just a few general instructions on how to prepare the dish. We make all kinds of variations of the dish. Once we stir fried our chopped chicken breast in regular old BBQ sauce, and that came out really good. If you want the official dish, and are lucky enough to have a PF Chang's in your general vicinity, go give the real thing a try, and see how close you can get.
For the Filling:
A couple of chicken breasts
ginger root
1 can of Bamboo Shoots (drained)
1 can of Water Chestnuts (drained)
1 Cucumber
1 Lettuce - Cupped style lettuce is best.
cooked rice (optional)
Sauce:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1/2 cup water
A dash or two of chili-garlic sauce (optional)
To start, peel a some ginger root, and cut about 4 1/8 inch slices. Heat a frying pan on medium high with a few tablespoons of cooking oil and fry the ginger. Let the ginger burn a bit, so that the flavor of the ginger works its way into the oil. Add the chicken breast and fry for several minutes on each side until golden brown. when it is done, set it aside to cool, but keep the oil.
While the chicken cooks, drain the cans of water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, and place them in a food processor. Give them a good chop, so that they are minced. Do not make them into mush, just a decent chop , that is the same consistency of the PF Chang wraps.
Slice a cucumber into one quarter inch julienne strips. Prepare the lettuce cups.
Mince about another 1/4 cup of ginger and add it to the water chestnut and bamboo shoot combination and mix.
After the chicken is done, mince it up into about 1/4 inch cubes, or a bit smaller. After the chicken is cubed, put back in the pan on (or wok) high heat, give it a good stir fry.
Add the water chestnut and bamboo shoot combo. Stir fry, adding a little of the sauce from above.
As you can see when we made ours, we did not have lettuce proper lettuce cups, but the still tasted pretty good! I place a scoop of rice, along with a scoop of the filling on the lettuce, and place a cucumber strip on top. For a little extra kick I put a little HuyFong chili-garlic sauce on it, too.
Last Updated ( Friday, 26 September 2008 )
