Chicken Pad Thai ~ #ImprovCookingChallenge

Welcome to another month of The Improv Cooking Challenge! We were challenged to use Meat and Nuts in this month's Improv Cooking Challenge. Find our group on Facebook if you're interested in joining in the fun; Nicole from Cookaholic Wife hosts our group! 

I immediately thought of pad thai when I heard meat and nuts - I love that crunch from the peanuts atop this delicious dish chock full of tender vegetables and meat, in that lovely sauce. I absolutely adore pad thai! We have a little Thai shop that we order from at work every now and then, and shrimp pad thai is almost always my "go to" to order from them.

This recipe is easily tweaked to use ingredients you have available, your favorite protein, etc. Use shrimp or beef in place of the chicken, and swap up the veggies to mix and match what you like best. If you have bean sprouts definitely throw some in! Those are really one of my favorite components of this dish - but with how few and far between our grocery pick ups have been lately, I wasn't going to count on being able to find any so just omitted for this iteration. If you like your pasta dish very "saucy" feel free to double the ingredients - the noodles do absorb most of the sauce as it stands - but I thought the flavor was well infused and that it was enough!

Improv Cooking Challenge: May 2020

Ingredients: Meat and Nuts

• Almond Crusted Chicken by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Baked Sajji Chicken by Sneha’s Recipe
• Grilled Chicken Salad with Walnut Vinaigrette by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Larb Lettuce Cups by Palatable Pastime
• Chicken Pad Thai by Making Miracles
• Ghanian Kyinkyinga Kebabs by Pandemonium Noshery
• Thai Cashew Beef by Cookaholic Wife

Chicken Pad Thai

Ingredients

10 oz Thai rice noodles

1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into small strips

2 TBS vegetable oil

1 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips

1 small green bell pepper, sliced into thin strips

2 medium carrots, diced into matchsticks

salt and pepper

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 TBS rice vinegar

1 TBS lime juice

1 TBS fish sauce

1 TBS cilantro paste

1 TBS minced garlic (jarred)

3 large eggs

1/2 cup roasted peanuts, chopped

Directions

1. Prepare your noodles per package direction (mine needed to boil about 5-6 minutes, then immediately be drained and rinsed in cold water to prevent over cooking). Set aside
2. In a large nonstick skillet heat 1 TBS of oil and saute the chicken (in batches if needed), until golden brown on both sides and cooked all the way through. Season chicken lightly with salt and pepper while cooking. Set chicken aside.
3. Heat the next TBS of oil, and saute the vegetables together (season lightly with salt and pepper) until well browned and to your desired tenderness (for me, we like then pretty tender and I cooked them about 10-12 minutes total, stirring often).
4. Meanwhile, combine all sauce ingredients in a small bowl or 4-cup measurer: brown sugar, rice vinegar, lime juice, fish sauce, cilantro paste, and minced garlic. Blend and set aside.
5. When vegetables are cooked, push to the sides of the bowl, add a small amount of oil to the center and add all three eggs, scrambling in the pan as they cook. When the eggs are set, add the chicken and noodles into the pan. Stir the sauce a final time and pour over everything, then gently toss mixture until well combined. Cook for another minute or two.
6. Serve with chopped peanuts sprinkled over the top. 

Recipe from Cooking Classy