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Hey guys, Chef Mark here.
We get a lot of requests for the cashew chicken.
We've come up with a great recipe for you.
It's got some toasted cashews in it.
We're usin' peanut oil to emphasize that whole nut flavor in it.
Let's grab our chicken for the dish.
So I'm gonna grab one of these chicken breast strips for stir-frying.
They're sliced, already marinated.
I don't have to do anything to them
and they're gonna be really nice and tender for the dish.
So this dish is really simple to put together,
but it wouldn't be a great dish unless it had a really good base sauce to it,
so that's what this is here.
It's our Asian Classics Stir-Fry Sauce.
Great on its own.
If you've been to any Chinese restaurant and had a brown sauce put together,
that's this sauce here.
All we're gonna do is add a couple things like peanut oil
and some cashews and some ginger to it,
and you're gonna have a fantastic recipe.
Let's go put this thing together.
Okay, cashew chicken.
There's a lot of components to this,
so I really wanna make sure that you get all of this together
before you start cooking any of this.
That's--we call it our mise en place;
especially important when we're puttin' together a stir-fry.
So I had a pan heating over here,
and we're gonna use about a pound of that meat,
so it's one package that we're gonna use.
And we're gonna go on high for this
the entire time we're gonna cook our chicken.
I've got two tablespoons of peanut oil we're gonna start with first.
Let's do half of that.
We're gonna go half this batch,
so we're gonna go as close as we can to that,
and we're gonna add our chicken into that.
What I don't want you to do is come up here
and sort of start droppin' pieces 'cause you're afraid of the oil.
As close as you can get to that--
much safer because I'm not gonna start splashing up onto my hands.
Once that chicken's in the pan,
I wanna make sure that you spread your chicken out,
so break these pieces up, separate 'em a little bit.
Make sure you get a nice, even surface area coating on the bottom,
'cause what we're tryin' to do is brown our chicken.
So get it nice, contact with the bottom of the pan.
Once it browns, we're gonna flip that over.
It's gonna be cooked all the way through.
The way I know that's cooked all the way through
is the fact that we cut it so thin.
So this is gonna take two batches.
We'll cook the first one, set it aside,
and then we'll cook the second.
All right, so my chicken's done.
It's cooked all the way through,
and we've got some nice browning on the outside of it.
So we're gonna put that to the side,
and now we're gonna build that whole cashew flavor.
So we're gonna add our cashews and one tablespoon of peanut oil,
and for me, I'm usin' that peanut oil because it tastes really good, for one,
but I'm also usin' nuts in it anyway, so let's increase that little bit of flavor.
So with that oil inside here,
as the cashews brown it's gonna flavor that oil,
which I'm gonna add my chicken back in
and it's gonna make a great cashew, toasted flavor on the inside of that.
So we're gonna let this brown a little bit,
and then we'll add our garlic and ginger.
So this is what we're lookin' for.
The cashews are really nice and brown,
those aromatics are really comin' out, really roasted.
Great flavor in there.
So let's add our--about a teaspoon, that half inch of ginger there,
and I've got three cloves of garlic.
We're gonna add that. That has been chopped as well.
Make sure we get all of that garlic on the inside.
Don't cheat yourself.
And then here, we're gonna cook this maybe on medium-low or so.
We're gonna let this cook for maybe two minutes or so
just to get, again, some of those aromatics filling that oil
so when we add that chicken back, it'll flavor it nice.
Just make sure that you don't brown the garlic
or some of the ginger in there as well.
So now that our garlic is cooked and our ginger's cooked
and really aromatic,
we're gonna add our chicken to this.
And for me, I'm gonna use a fresh set of tongs
'cause we had our raw chicken on the other ones.
And all that's left to do is to stir this up,
and we're gonna add our half cup of our stir-fry sauce into that.
We're gonna crank this up
'cause we don't need to leave it on low
because I'm startin' to get hungry,
and all you need to do is warm this through.
And for you guys at home, if you wanna stir it just like this,
maybe back and forth, just to get this incorporated.
We like to flip it up in the air a little bit.
Enough to warm that through.
And all that's left is to plate this thing.
What I like on this is just a simple garnish
of some scallions that I cut up.
Make sure we get all that sauce.
Simple garnish of these scallions.
This one, knocked out of the park.
Real easy to do.