First, my apologies. It's been awhile since I've posted anything. I've been cooking, but in the past year we have planned a wedding, gotten married, moved in together, and have spent a lot of time remodeling our house. In other words, I've been cooking (gluten-free) almost every night, but have forgotten to make time to post the recipes. Lately, I've been taking pictures to get back at it!
Anyway, one of Scott's favorite restaurants is PF Changs. They have a great gluten-free menu with lots of options and he basically loves any kind of asian food. I could almost do without asian food for the most part (it always seems too sweet or spicy for me) with the exception of PF Changs lettuce wraps. I love them. We went to celebrate his birthday there in January and I realized I should try to make lettuce wraps at home! Here is my gluten-free version of PF Changs lettuce wraps. They were actually very easy, and to me, tasted very similar to the "real" thing. We made it a dinner instead of just an appetizer.
In my opinion, the most time consuming part was gathering ingredients that you may not just have on hand (like sesame oil, water chestnuts, etc).
What You Need:
1 head iceberg lettuce
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup warm water
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed, diced, or minced (your preference)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 - 8oz can water chestnuts, chopped
4 tablespoons gluten free soy sauce (I used Tamari)
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 onion chopped fine
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
1/2 cup mushrooms, minced (optional)
What You Do:
If you've been to PF Changs, you'll remember they mix a sauce for you at the table to add to your lettuce wraps. We're going to call that the "pouring sauce." We will also be making a marinade to add to the actual stir fried chicken and veggies.
Pouring sauce:
1. In a medium bowl, dissolve 1/4 cup sugar with 1/2 cup warm water. Then add 2 tablespoons of gluten-free soy sauce, 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons ketchup, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil. Place this mixture in the fridge.2. In a separate smaller bowl, combine 1 teaspoon hot water, 1 tablespoon dijon mustard, and 2 cloves of garlic, minced. Mix well and set mixture aside until ready to serve.
Lettuce Wrap Filling:
1. Combine 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of sesame oil in a wok or large frying pan. Heat about 1 minute. Add chicken (I actually used my food processor and put the chicken breasts in whole to cut them up finely like PF Changs, but you could easily do it with a knife or leave it in larger pieces if you prefer) and sauté until cooked through. The pieces are small so this will only take about 5 minutes at most. Remove chicken from pan and cool. Keep oil in the pan over low heat.
3. Turn the pan with the oil up to high heat and add another tablespoon of olive oil. After about 1 minute of the oil heating, add chicken, 3 tablespoons minced garlic, chopped onions, water chestnuts, mushrooms (optional) and the stir fry sauce that you just made.
4. Stir fry everything until the onions have cooked, about 4-5 minutes.
5. While stir fry is cooking, rinse your lettuce and break off large lettuce pieces to serve as the wrap. We found that the larger pieces were the easiest to eat.6. Remove stir fry and place in dish alongside the lettuce cups.
7. Remove "pouring sauce" from fridge and combine with dijon mustard mix that you had set aside. Use a whisk to make sure it mixes completely.
Serve the lettuce wraps, the chicken stir fry mixture, and the pouring sauce together and combine the ingredients to make what I think is pretty close to PF Changs lettuce wraps gluten-free version.
Scott absolutely RAVED about these!
Enjoy!
