Peanut Butter Stir Fry Recipe

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re gonna do a peanut stir fry.

Very exciting! I’ve got my wok all ready to go but before we start stir frying we’re gonna do a couple of things first. One is cook the rice if your serving this with rice so I’ve got my rice going in the back there and we’re gonna make a sauce.

And I’m gonna do a peanut sauce because it’s so delicious and it’s basically the same peanut sauce that I use for different purposes so if you watch my Thai fresh rolls video I used the same peanut sauce. I’m just gonna make it a little bit more liquid since its going on to the stir fry.

Now stir fry in general is a very healthy way to cook vegetables because it uses very little oil, very little water, it cooks them very quickly so they’re not exposed to heat for very long but it softens them up a little bit so they’re easily to digest and the cooking quickly with high heat, with little oil, little water means they’ll retain a lot of their nutrients.

So we got started with the sauce. So our sauce start with a good spoonful of peanut butter and I actually like to use a fork to mix this up because I find it gets through the peanut butter easier.

We’re gonna soften it up with a bit of sesame oil, the untoasted kind. The toasted kind is a very distinct flavor so if you use too much it can be a little bit overpowering so I just put in a little bit of that.

Oops! I wasn’t watching and that was probably a little bit too much but what are you gonna do? I’m also going to put some tamari in here. Good amount of that, that’s where the salt is coming through, it’s gonna combine this sauce together in terms of flavor so I’m not adding any salt. I’m just adding tamari.

Lots of people when they’re making a sauce will put tamari and miso together but because they’re both made from fermented soy beans putting them together confuses their flavor so I use one or the other and this one I like to use tamari.

You want to stir this until it comes together into a smooth sauce. So if you see the texture there, all of those components of the sauce have come together because of the salt in the tamari.

And I’m gonna add some vinegar and I use apple cider vinegar. Brown rice vinegar fine as well, has more of an Asian flavor but apple cider vinegar is better on the digestive system.

The vinegar is gonna cause things to separate again so you gotta make sure you stir it out nice and then just go to whatever texture you want for this. Like I said I like this one a little bit more liquid than I would a peanut dipping sauce so I’ve got quite a bit of vinegar there.

I wouldn’t add too much vinegar, if you need to thin it out add some water, the vinegar is pretty powerful. Once your sauce is together, let that to let the flavors combine. I’m going to use a little bit of dried seaweed in this one.

Seaweeds have an incredible amount of nutrients in them including iodine. It is one of the richest sources of iodine which is crucial to your thyroid function which controls metabolism so among other reasons to eat them, there’s one, excellent source of minerals.

So what I do with the dry is I put them in a little bit of water and then let them soak and they’re gonna expand quite large from where they start.

I’m using a wakame seaweed and this is where it starts dried and you can see they’re just starting to open here, they’ll be much bigger than this by the time they’re done.

Normally when I’m cooking vegetables I cut them as I go to make sure they maintain their freshness but with stir fry you need to cut all of your vegetables up front because things are gonna happen really quickly and you need to be constantly stirring hence the name stir fry so you don’t have time while things are cooking to chop stuff up.

So what I’m doing is I’m cutting up my carrots, my broccoli and my red pepper gonna get them all set and I’m gonna put a little bit of green onion in this as well so I’m gonna cut those up nicely as well.

To cut a broccoli flora so that you get nice pieces here, cut from this part of the stem down as suppose to the other way and that way they’ll stay together in nice chunks.

I also cut up the broccoli stem, if you just take off the outside of the skin its nice and soft in here, cooks up really nicely.

Before you start stir frying make sure that our rice is getting close to done or it’s already done. It will stay hot but the stir fry you need to serve fresh so I’m gonna turn this on. I’m going to six and a half which is out of nine so I call that medium high. Wait till this is really nice and hot. We’re gonna get some sesame oil, not the toasted kind.

And you may notice that I kept the vegetables separated on my cutting board because I’m still gonna still add them one at a time like I would if I was cooking them slower and I’m gonna start with the carrots, then the broccoli, then the peppers and then the green onion right at the very end.

Alright! The wok is ready, add the tiniest bit of oil and start with the carrots and this is gonna be a really hot pan so be careful and stir. Keep them moving around the pan. They only need a couple of minutes then we’re going to the broccoli and stir. Your just looking for the very slightness start of the cooking process.

So the color of the broccoli is starting to deepen right now just very slightly if you can see that so we’re ready for the pepper. And last but not least, the green onion.

Sometimes things will fly out of the pot, they try to escape, if I’m with you, apprehend them and get them back in the pot.

Ok! The last step is the fun part. You take the slightest bit of oil, pour it on the side here, keep stirring and that’s where the vegetables finish cooking is with the light steam.

Turn the heat off and get those off of the element. Now I’m adding this seaweed here so I’m just gonna squeeze the excess water out of there. If there are any big chunks you can chop them up and make sure that they don’t stick together in a clump becaause a big clump of seaweed in your mouth is probably isn’t what you’re looking for.

Ok! Stir those guys around, I’ve got a bowl with some rice in there, put these vegetables on top and top with my peanut sauce.

There’s your healthy vegan peanut stir fry. I’m Heather, this is Freshly Served. You can find the recipe for this and other delicious vegan meals at www.HealthyVeganRecipes.net.