Thai Chicken Satay

In high school, a friend and I were known as the “Profanity Police.” If you consider the foul-language requirements for an R-rated movie, then we were living in a 7-hour R-rated movie, five days a week. All that swearing really bothered me! It was like being continually bombarded with mind poison. So with friends, I would start suggesting alternatives to their expletives. They would swear, and then I would say, “You mean ‘shoot!'” Or, “You mean ‘dangit!'” Eventually, most of my friends began to watch their language around me and use the substitutes I suggested. Or they would teasingly say, “Heavens to Betsy!” instead of swearing.

Because my brain was constantly barraged with bad language, I had to come up with pseudo-expletives for myself. I would say things like, “Dagnabit!” or “Holy crud!” Sometimes I would even say, “Blast it!” (Shocking, I know). To this day, I have never sworn. I have said some words in the scriptures that indicate a hot place and your state of being should you end up there, but only in the context of the scriptures–never in anger or frustration.

Sometimes people swear when they are excited or surprised. If you are one of these people, please choose your pseudo-expletive right now, because you are going to use it when you make this Thai Chicken Satay. Here’s what I say: “Holy crud! This is SO good!” My family loves this, and I often make this for company because it is simply amazing.

What makes it amazing? Well, I’m going to say it’s the peanut sauce. Peanut butter, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and honey. It’s a recipe for heaven (as opposed to that hot place I mentioned before). Cook up some chicken and colorful vegetables, then bathe them in this sauce, and your taste buds will rejoice.

The colorful vegetables consist of red peppers, yellow onions, green onions, and shredded carrots. It’s not often that you use shredded carrots in a main dish, but they are wonderful here. They give a subtle sweet flavor and cook up so nicely and evenly with the other vegetables. As you know, carrots take longer to cook than other vegetables, so having them in shredded form fixes this problem.

When I make this, I usually stir fry the chicken and garlic first, then remove them from the pan. I add a little bit more oil, then stir fry the vegetables. Once they are done, I add the chicken back into the pan and then pour the sauce over.

Remember when I talked about the amazing sauce? Here’s how you make it:

In a small saucepan over medium low heat, add peanut butter (creamy or chunky, your choice), ginger powder, soy sauce, garlic, and honey. Stir until smooth. That’s it. You can also add some red pepper flakes if you like a little heat. Then just mix that delicious sauce in with your chicken vegetables and serve it over rice. Then fake swear word your way all through dinner. It’s that flippin’ awesome.

What are your favorite fake swear words? Leave them in the comments! (Please, no real swear words. They will be immediately deleted).

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Thai Chicken Satay

Author: Melissa Howell

Ingredients

• 2 cups chicken cut into bite-sized pieces
• 3 tsp. garlic
• 1/2 of a yellow onion cut into chunks
• 1 red bell pepper cut into chunks
• 6 green onions cut at an angle in 2-inch pieces
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 tsp. garlic
• 1/4-1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes

Instructions

1. For the stir fry, heat a skillet with a little oil over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and 3 tsp. garlic and cook until the chicken is no longer pink. Remove from the skillet.
2. Add a little more oil into the skillet and add all the vegetables. Cook about five minutes, or until everything is tender-crisp.
3. Add the chicken back into the pan with the vegetables.
4. For the sauce, in a separate pan, combine the peanut butter, soy sauce, honey, ginger, 1 tsp. garlic, and red pepper. Heat and stir over medium-low heat until combined and heated through.
5. Pour over the chicken and vegetable mixture just before serving and stir until everything is covered with sauce.
6. Serve over Japanese or Jasmine rice.

Looking for more great Thai dishes? Try these!

Sheet Pan Thai Chicken and Peppers with Peanut Ginger Sauce

Easy Thai Ginger Coconut Soup