Dinner Tonight: Minced Chicken in Lettuce Cups
After bumbling through the fridge for a few seconds, I laid eyes on a half-chicken and some Boston lettuce. Though the inspiration was quick, locating a recipe for "chicken lettuce cups" wasn't so easy. Suffice to say, when searching for the recipe the first 50 or so links mention P.F. Chang's within a sentence or two. No big surprises. That's where I, and probably a few million other people, had their first experience with this combo.
Unfortunately, the recipes I found looked suspicious. Most of them used ground chicken, which immediately turned me off. Eventually I wanted to know if this was an actual recipe or just something the chain created to deal with the Atkins diet craze a few years back.
I found my first clue in this Saveur article, which had a "minced chicken in lettuce cups" recipe adapted from a "famous Cantonese recipe for squab." And sure enough, after modifying my search to "quail lettuce cups" I ran across this recipe from Ming Tsai. Combining the two and utilizing the leftovers in my fridge, I created my own version. I'm sure the authentic choice of squab is best, but this chicken version was still delicious.
About the author:
Minced Chicken in Lettuce Cups
- serves 2 -
Adapted from Saveur
Ingredients
2 pounds chicken, skin removed and bones removed
1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 cup water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
2 scallions, white part diced and green part chopped
1 cup cremini mushroom, chopped
8 leaves Boston, bibb, or iceberg lettuce
Salt and pepper
Procedure
1. Finely dice the chicken. I found a meat cleaver to work best, though a chefs knife will work, too.
2. Pour the oil into a work or large iron skillet set over high heat. Add the ginger and scallion whites and stir-fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Dump in the chicken and mushrooms. Continue stirring, breaking up the chicken pieces, and cook for about a minute, or until the chicken is white and no longer raw. Pour in the oyster sauce and cook for 2 more minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Remove from the heat and add the scallion greens and chopped water chestnuts. Stir until everything is combined. Season with salt if necessary. Fill each lettuce cup with a little bit of the mixture and serve.
View other entries from Dinner Tonight.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
6 Comments:
Looks great! I just made lettuce wraps w/ boston bibb lettuce a couple nights ago. One bowl of sesame-ginger chicken, one of diced nectarine, mango, and mandarin oranges, and one of boston bibb. A pretty quick, easy meal for a TV-heavy Wednesday evening of Lost, Damages, and Top Chef.
Here's the sesame-ginger chicken I made for the lettuce wraps :)
http://flickr.com/photos/maxcriden/3256319252/
maxcriden at 6:10PM on 02/06/09
I've had the original dish here in Hong Kong on numerous occasions - it is delicious - they call it minced pigeon in lettuce cups. I admit I was sceptical, but the first bite proved to be a relevation... mmmm.
HK Expat at 4:37AM on 02/07/09
Some restaurants, when you order Peking duck, will use a similar recipe with the leftover duck meat and serve it to you as an additional dish.
anonymoose at 10:56AM on 02/09/09
I have some left over chicken and this will be perfect!
ddvierra68 at 6:52PM on 02/16/09
i don't understand how a tablespoon of oyster sauce can be enough.
It also took way over a minute (or 3, or 10) to turn all of the chicken white.
I had a little over 2 lbs of chicken because of how it came packaged, and dicing was taking too long, so i pulsed strips in a food processor, so maybe that added some time.
but back to the oyster sauce, once the chicken was white, one tablespoon hardly covered the top of the chicken in my wok (spread thin), and definitely didn't flavor all of the chicken, or turn it to the pretty brown color that is in the picture.
so I'm wondering if anyone else had any issues with this, and what your solution was, because I ended up adding much more oyster sauce, which made it rather salty (not to mention sodium-laden).
that being said, it was delicious and tasty, I'll definitely want to make a less-salty version again.
boingbaby at 8:34PM on 02/25/09
oh, also, this made a LOT more than 2 servings. closer to about 4-6.
boingbaby at 8:36PM on 02/25/09