Healthy Chinese food!

It's hard to find people who don't like Chinese food. I lived in Texas in high school, and a brand new PF Chang's opened up during my senior year. My friends and I used to wait hours to get in. To this day, whenever I visit my friend Audra (who's since moved to Pittsburgh), we go there and split lettuce wraps, kung pao chicken, and fried rice.

 At PF Chang's in Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, Chinese takeout is right up there with Pizza Hut Meat Lovers' Pizza in terms of calories. For the most part, everything is breaded, fried, and sitting in grease. I found the nutrition info for PF Chang's online and found out that even nice Chinese places serve up calorie bombs. (If you like PF Chang's: don't look it up. It's depressing.) While that's perfectly fine once in a while, you don't want to do it on the regular.

Luckily, I found some healthy Chinese recipes that taste like the restaurant stuff. One of my favorites is chicken lettuce wraps.

Ingredients (you can find most of these in the Asian foods section of the grocery store):

1 head of iceberg lettuce
1 pound ground chicken breast
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Asian chili pepper sauce
1 can (8 ounce size) sliced water chestnuts, drained, finely chopped
1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil

Basically all you have to do is cook the chicken, throw in all the other ingredients besides the sesame oil, mix together until heated through, and then stir in the sesame oil.

 I also really liked this sweet and sour chicken, although it came out tasting a bit more like stir fry, since it's not breaded. (Anything breaded is usually loaded with fat.)

 

200 calories per serving. This recipe makes 6 servings, so you might need to adjust your ingredients if you're cooking more or less.

3/4 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce

4 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 clove of garlic, minced (I recommend investing in a jar of minced garlic, so you don't have to chop it up yourself. I hate mincing garlic by hand.)

4 teaspoons canola oil

1 1/2 cups sliced carrots

1 large red bell pepper, cut into strips

2 cups fresh snow pea pods

12 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 8-ounce can pineapple chunks, drained

Directions:
1. In a bowl, stir together broth, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, and garlic; set aside.
2. In a large skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of canola oil over medium-high heat. Add carrots and pepper, cook for 3 minutes. Add pea pods; cook and stir about 1 minute more. Remove vegetables from skillet; set aside.
3. Add the remaining  1 teaspoon oil to skillet. Add chicken to skillet; cook and stir about 4 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Push the chicken to the side of the skillet. Stir sauce and add to the center of the skillet; cook and stir until it's thickened and bubbly. Add vegetable mixture and pineapple chunks to skillet; heat through.


Lastly, this dinner was a lot tastier than it looks. Spicy kung pao chicken is my favorite Chinese dish, hands-down, and it's especially good with broccoli and brown rice.

Ingredients:

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into chunks
2 tablespoons white wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
2 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
1 ounce hot chile paste
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
4 green onions, chopped

Directions:

1. To Make marinade: Combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture and mix together. Place chicken pieces in a glass dish or bowl and add marinade. Toss to coat. Cover dish and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

2. To Make Sauce: In a small bowl combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture, chili paste, vinegar and sugar. Mix together and add green onion, garlic, water chestnuts and peanuts. In a medium skillet, heat sauce slowly until aromatic.

Meanwhile, remove chicken from marinade and sautee in a large skillet until meat is white and juices run clear. Add sauteed chicken to sauce and let simmer together until sauce thickens.