Chicken and Cashew
Dinner | Chinese
One thing I love about wok cooking is that the recipe usually take under 30 minutes. That's because we're cooking the dish over a high heat, so everything cooks very quickly. This is one of my favourite 30 minute dinners, chicken and cashew stir fry.
My biggest tip with cooking on a wok is to make sure everything is cut and prepped before you start cooking. Once we start cooking, it will go fast so you need to be ready.
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp neutral oil (vegetable, canola, peanut)
- ½ cup cashews
- 5 whole dried birdseye chillies (optional)
- 1 brown onion, sliced
- 1 green capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
- 2 spring onions, chopped
- thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, finely sliced julienne
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 4 chicken thigh fillets, sliced 1cm thick
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1½ tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- steamed rice, to serve
Directions
- Heat oil in a wok over high heat.
- Add cashews and cook for 2 minutes, tossing, until golden brown.
- Add chillies and cook for a further 1 minute, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Add onions and capsicum, cook for 2 minutes, until softened, tossing.
- Add chicken and cook for 3-4 minutes, until browned.
- Add the ginger, garlic and spring onions, tossing to combine, then return cashews and chillies to wok.
- Stir in oyster sauce and soy sauce, bring to a boil.
- Mix cornflour with 1½ tbsp water to make a slurry, mix into stir fry.
- Cook for 2 minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly.
- Serve stirfry immediately over some steamed rice
Recipe notes
Dried birdseye chillies:
Small, very hot dried chillies that infuse heat and fragrance into the oil at the start of cooking. Five whole ones gives a genuinely spicy result. If you prefer less heat, start with 2 or 3. They go in early and are removed before serving, so the heat is distributed rather than concentrated. Find them at Asian grocery stores or in the Asian aisle of most supermarkets.
Oyster sauce:
The backbone of the sauce. Oyster sauce adds sweetness, umami and body in a way that other sauces don’t replicate well. Don’t substitute with hoisin or sweet soy. It’s widely available at supermarkets and, once opened, keeps for months in the fridge. Worth having a bottle on hand for any stir-fry.
Cornflour slurry:
One tablespoon of cornflour mixed with 1½ tablespoons of cold water in a small bowl before it goes into the wok. The cornflour gelatinises in the hot sauce and thickens it to a glossy, clingy consistency. Always pre-mix it rather than adding dry cornflour directly to the wok, which leaves lumps that don’t dissolve.