Recipe of the Week: Chicken Lettuce Wraps (gluten free)

One of my favorite dishes of all time are PF Chang's lettuce wraps. We order them every time we go there. I thought it would be fun to try and find a recipe that came as close as possible to replicating the appearance and more importantly the taste of PF Chang's signature appetizer. So was I ever thrilled, to go no further than the internet to find this wonderful recipe on http://www.recipezaar.com/. This recipe is as close as I'll probably ever find to matching the original. Do they taste JUST like PF Chang's? No...but they are very close and they are FABULOUS. I served these for dinner tonight along with a fruit salad. We each ate 2 along with the fruit and all agreed that it was not enough food for dinner. They are in fact, an appetizer...so this was not actually surprising. Next time I will prepare another chinese dish to accompany the lettuce wraps to make a more well rounded meal.

Here is what you will need:

1 T. vegetable oil
1 pound ground chicken
1 cup water chestnuts
2/3 cup mushrooms (whichever type you prefer..I used cremini)
3 T chopped onion (I use frozen chopped onions)
1 t. minced or crushed garlic
4-6 leaves of iceberg lettuce

SPECIAL SAUCE

3T. sugar
1/2 cup water
2 T soy sauce
2 T ketchup
1 T lemon juice
1/8 t. sesame oil
1 T hot mustard
2 t  HOT water
1-2 teaspons garlic and red chile paste or sauce

STIR FRY SAUCE

2 T soy sauce
2 T brown sugar
1/2 t. rice wine vinegar

DIRECTIONS:

Make the special sauce by first dissolving the sugar in water in a small bowl. Add soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ketchup, lemon juice and sesame oil.

Measure the hot water into a small bowl. Measure out the hot mustard and stir into the water.

Next add a 1/2 t. of the watered down mustard to your special sauce and stir.

Then add a 1/2 t. of the garlic chili sauce to the special sauce and stir.

Do a taste test to determine if you want your sauce spicier or if it is just right. If you want it hotter, add another 1/2 t. each of the watered down mustard and the garlic chili sauce. Keep adding 1/2 t. at a time until you find the desired temp of the sauce for you. I used 1 t. of the watered down mustard and 1 t. of the garlic chili sauce to create a mild to medium spicy sauce. Once you have found your desired lever of heat, cover the special sauce and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Prepare the stir fry sauce by mixing the soy sauce, brown sugar and rice vinegar together in a small bowl.

Set aside.

Next,  finely chop the water chestnuts and the mushrooms. I use a hand chopper which works GREAT for this. I got my chopper from Pampered Chef, but I've seen them at Target and other stores now. If you have a food process , mini electric chopper you can use these as well. You can even do this with a knife, but it will be more time consuming.

Sometimes I like to do the prep work for making dinner in the morning, and I did this for these lettuce wraps.

I stored the vegies and sauces in these great Pampered Chef  Prep bowls with lids. I kept them stored in the refrigerator until I was ready to finish making the meal in the evening.

Next, prepare the "lettuce cups". Take a head of iceburg lettuce and cut the bottom stem off.

Carefully de-construct the head of lettuce, removing the leaves one at a time. This was a little bit challenging to be honest, and some of the leaves tore a little as I was removing them from the head. They still worked well as lettuce cups, so if this happens to you, don't be concerned.

Once you have removed 4-6 leaves, carefully wash each leave and pat dry with paper towel. Stack the lettuce cups on a plate, cover loosely with plastic wrap and store in fridge until ready.

The final step is to cook the meat and prepare the filling. Pour 1 T. of the vegy oil into the bottom of a large skillet. Crumble the ground chicken into the pan and brown the meat. When meat is almost completely cooked through, I like to take a potato masher and mash the meat into small crumbles.

Next, push some of the meat over to one side of the pan and add one T of vegetable oil to the pan. Add the onion and garlic and stir around in the oil over medium heat for a minute or two.

Next stir in the water chestnuts, mushrooms and STIR-FRY sauce. (continue to reserve the SPECIAL SAUCE)

Stir all ingrediants well to combine and to coat the meat and vegies with the stir fry sauce. Continue to stir-fry the ingredints for another 2-3 minutes. Transfer the filling to a serving bowl.

Set out the filling, lettuce cups and special sauce for preparing the lettuce wraps.

Spoon desired amount of filling into a lettuce cup and drizzle with desired amount of the special sauce. Fold the lettuce cup like a taco and EAT!

If you have never had the pleasure of eating a lettuce wrap, you must try it. The hot and tangy filling, drizzled with the slightly spicy asian special sauce all wrapped up in a cool, crunchy lettuce cup is simpy divine!

I dare you to eat just one!

ENJOY!