You may remember the Pork and Shrimp Lettuce Wraps I did last winter. If you missed it, don’t forget to check it out. I still remember how delicious they were. This past weekend, my mom showed me one of the ways she makes lettuce wraps, with a chicken and flowering chive filling. Its also super delicious!
If you’re unfamiliar with flowering chives, you prepare them by picking off stiff ends, kind of like the way you break off the bottoms of asparagus. Then remove the flowers, which are bitter, and cut as you like.
Keep in mind that recipes written at my mom’s house are not quite as exact as the ones I write in my kitchen. She doesn’t have many measuring tools and starts to forget half-way through the recipe that we’re measuring. Still, this is delicious so use the recipe as a base and adjust to your taste.
Chicken and Flowering Chive Lettuce Wraps
~roughly 12 appetizers or 6 entrees
- 1 3/4 cups small diced chicken thigh meat
- 1 X-large egg white
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons corn starch
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 1/2 cup green chopped peppers (choice of sweet or spicy or a mix)
- 1 1/4 cups chopped (1/2″) flowering chives
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
- 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
- salt to taste
- iceberg lettuce leaves to serve
- hoisin sauce (optional)
Instructions –
1. Mix chicken, egg white, soy sauce, corn starch, and sugar in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.
2. Heat wok on high flame and add 2 teaspoons vegetable oil. Saute peppers with a dash of salt for about 1 minute. Remove to a small bowl.
3. Add 1 teaspoon of oil to the wok and saute flowering chives with a dash of salt for about 1 minute. Remove into the same bowl the peppers are in. Set aside.
4. Add 2 tablespoons oil to wok and stir fry chicken mixture. Add a dash of salt and dark soy sauce. Stir around until cooked through.
5. While the peppers and chives were resting, they will have let out some liquid. Drain thoroughly and add back into the wok. Stir around until thoroughly mixed. Season to taste and remove to large serving bowl.
6. Serve with lettuce and hoisin sauce.
Ooh! These are my favorite!
The name alone is gorgeous.
flowering chives? So pretty! I wish every chinese restaurant here had this dish!
your wok is gorgeous. That must be a hand-me-down. Now that’s seasoned!
OOOOh ,….wow: these are lovely appetizers! I adore them!!
I would like to savour a few of them right now!
Yummie!
Hey Jessica, these look de-lish …!! Do you think they can be made vegan? I would thinking mushrooms, tofy or water chestnuts .. none of the mock meat stuff? Fancy a try?
Priyanka, stir-fry dishes are the easiest to substitute. I think dried bean curd would be a great option. Also, I actually had a lettuce wrap at a vegetarian restaurant once and they used mushrooms and pine nuts.