Spicy Gingery Cashew Chicken
For Christmas my husband got me Half Baked Harvest’s Everyday cookbook. HBH is hands down my favorite food blogger to follow. Her recipes are amazing and food photography…beautiful, artistic and inspiring. This whole year, I’ve been making at least one recipe from this cookbook each week. Last week I made her Spicy Gingery Chicken which easily made my favorite list. The recipe had me cutting up chicken thighs into bite size pieces, coated in arrowroot powder (i used cornstarch) and individually dipped in beaten egg and pressed into panko before placing it on a sheet pan to be baked in the oven. I reduced a sweet Asian inspired sauce and drizzled it on top of the chicken and ate it over a bowl of steamed rice. It was delicious.
I can’t wait to make this dish again, but as a mother of 3 young kids, I was inspired to make a quicker version of this dish using ground chicken and a similar sauce to feed my family on a busy weeknight. We currently do a lot of these one-pan dinners with ground chicken or beef with veggies over steamed rice. My kids love mixing it all together and usually clean their plates. To make this recipe less spicy for them, I only use about 1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes, but I prefer this recipe as I wrote it up below.
Most of the time, I also cook a small bag of frozen cauliflower rice and mix it into the regular rice. I love doing half cauliflower rice/half sticky (short grain) rice because I think it's the best of both worlds. The cauliflower cuts down on the overall carbs and adds one more serving of a veggie to your plate, but there is just enough rice to give you the same texture as if you were only eating a bowl of rice—a win in my book. Enjoy this easy weeknight meal!
Ingredients:
1 Tbsp avocado oil
1/2 onion, diced
1.5 lbs ground chicken
1 tsp ground ginger
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 inch ginger, minced
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup salted cashews
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 (uncooked) cups rice of choice
2 green onion stems, sliced, for garnish
Sauce Ingredients:
2/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup pomegranate juice
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 Tbsp corn starch
Instructions:
Begin cooking the rice in a rice cooker or according to the package.
Make the sauce by whisking all the ingredients together into a small mixing bowl. Set aside.
Heat a large sauté pan on medium-high heat. Add avocado oil and onion and sauté the onion until it is soft, about 5 minutes.
Add ground chicken to the sauté pan and cook the chicken, breaking it apart as it browns.
Mix ground ginger and cornstarch together in a small dish. Sprinkle this on top of the ground chicken and onion and stir to mix in well.
Add the red bell pepper, garlic, ginger, cashews and red pepper flakes. Continue to sauté for 5 more minutes.
Pour sauce into the pan. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Continue simmering for 15-20 minutes, or until sauce is thickened to your preference.
Serve over steamed rice and top with sliced green onions.
