We had a roasted chicken on Monday night and I thought there was a lot leftover but it turned out there was only one breast and one leg. So my idea of making a curry sauce to serve over the chicken that would be served over couscous needed to be changed rather quickly since I needed to make dinner in the next 20 minutes.

So I decided to clean out the refrigerator a little and throw together a quick stir-fry with some spices and various vegetables that were on there last legs along with the leftover chicken. It was quick and easy and delicious too. Simple but tasty.

It’s pear season and I purchased a flat of them at Costco so for a salad my wife sliced up some Bartlett Pears, place the slices on some Romaine lettuce, crumbled some blue cheese on top and served it with a commercial brand poppy seed dressing. Again quick, easy and delicious.

Leftover Chicken Stir-Fry

Ingredients – I used whatever vegetables were lying around my vegetable drawer in the fridge but you can substitute your favorite stir-fry veggies. 

4 – 5 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 thumbnail size piece of ginger
½ onion – Found it in a zip lock bag at the bottom of the vegetable drawer
1 yellow bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 handful of green beans
1 small bunch of broccoli heads
Leftover chicken
1-teaspoon Asian fish sauce
1-tablespoon rice wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Prep the Ingredients – As with all stir-fry, the most work and time is spend getting the ingredients ready. See my web page on stir-fry. It is important to try and chop all like ingredients to the same size so they cook evenly.

I peeled the garlic but left it whole. All I wanted to do was flavor the oil with garlic and ginger. By leaving it whole, it’s easy to work with and does the job nicely. If you like the taste of garlic, by all means chop it up or slice it. The ginger I did slice but if I wanted to add more flavor from the ginger, I would have grated it.

I sliced the onion and cut the slices in half. For the peppers, I cut the top and stem off, removed the seeds and membrane and cut them into ¼ inch slices. The green beans were washed, trimmed of ends and cut into quarters or thirds. The broccoli stems were cleaned and separated.

The chicken was already cooked so I just removed the meat from the bone and sliced it into strips. It was more like shredding than slicing because the meat was so tender. Now I was ready to start cooking.

How to Make at Home

With any stir-fry, you want the pan and oil hot but not smoking so I headed up the oil in my large sauté pan over medium-high heat. I added the whole garlic and sliced ginger and cooked until the garlic was brown and I could smell it release its flavor. I removed the garlic and ginger with a slotted spoon and discarded it.

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This recipe comes from Chef Jim Ruch, a boat chef from Florida who travels all over the world cooking on various size yachts for all sorts of interesting people. We met online when he asked me to help promote his cooking DVD, One Pan Wonder.

This recipe is very versatile. You can create new versions just by changing some of the ingredients while using the same cooking technique. I found I had to reduce the amount of crushed red pepper to make it edible for me and if it was up to my wife I would have left it out all together.

The cooking technique for this recipe is saute. (For more on how to saute properly) Not only is this recipe great with chicken breasts, it can be used with pork or fish too with a few minor adjustments.

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