Quick and Dirty Chicken Stir Fry

This is a long-standing finals week favorite of mine, and despite not being in the middle of finals, it was called for on this lazy Sunday evening. The basic recipe goes like this:

Get some veggies. Frozen is fine (fresh onions, garlic, and ginger if possible). Chop some chicken. Put oil into a wok or skillet (sesame adds a nice flavor, but use whatever you have). Add garlic onions and ginger until soft/a bit brown. Add chicken until slightly browned. Add veggies and stir. Add desired sauce. Cook until chicken is done. Serve alone or with rice while studying, veging in front of the television, or whatever it is you do during finals and/or lazy Sunday afternoons.

It's the height of simplicity, is healthy, cheap, fast and delicious. Tonight, I used a frozen stir fry mix, some frozen green beans and frozen broccoli, chopped mushrooms, onions and garlic, chicken, and Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce. At the end, I added a cup of frozen Trader Joe's brown rice directly to the wok and let it soak up the sauce.

Gourmet it is not. Most even good home cooks would probably flog me for using frozen green beans when I can probably get them fresh just around the corner, and they would be right. I'm an awful, awful person. An awful, awful person with a delicious bowl of stir fry in front of me. I believe you should always use the freshest ingredients...except when you don't have fresh ingredients in the house, are broke, are lazy, and have all the frozen and pre-chopped makings of your dinner without even getting out of your PJs. In that case, I say bring on the freezer burn!

Substitutions include basically anything you can possibly imagine. Make it vegetarian with tofu, or tempeh, or leave out the protein all together. Make it with beef, seafood, or any other protein. Put whatever veggies you like, fresh or frozen (as I said, fresh is always better, but frozen is always lazier), and leave out whatever you don't like. Add Sriracha or garlic chili sauce for heat, add spices in different combinations for flavor, mix sauces. You can literally do whatever you want with the basic outline and come up with something pretty tasty. Well, probably not if you mix ketchup and balsamic vinegar with a cumin based sauce, but, you know, within reason.

Mine turned out great. Hope yours does too!