Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Rondi's Recipes: Chicken Teriyaki Ramen Stir-fry

Mandi and I do a pretty good job of making all of our meals at home, but we want to become even better. We figured that if we could commit to doing one food blog a week, it would push us to become more creative and it might give you guys some good food ideas.

So here it is, week number 1. If you guys have any suggestions on how this is laid out or what you guys would like to see answered/done differently, please let us know :)

Chicken Teriyaki Ramen Stir-fry


Some of the ingredients: Brown sugar, Soy sauce, Teriyaki marinade (to marinate the chicken), minced garlic, ginger and corn starch


Recipe for the Teriyaki sauce can be found here. We actually doubled the amount of soy sauce, brown sugar and garlic - as a result, we added more corn starch for thickening.


We cut up two boneless chicken breasts and browned them in some olive oil.


We bought an Asian Stir Fry vegetable bag a while ago from Sam's Club. For this recipe we used about 3 cups or so. Also used two bags of Ramen noodles.


Sauteed vegetables in a little bit of olive oil.


Like three peas in a pod...


Combine the Teriyaki sauce, vegetables and chicken - stir.


Dump Ramen noodles on top.


Stir until Ramen noodles are fully coated.


Serve...


...and eat...


...and then get ready to take a bike ride.

Prep Time: About 10 minutes
Cook Time: About 15 minutes


What we liked:

Made with ingredients that I already had around the house - frozen veggies, ramen, chicken, etc.

Relatively idiot proof - even I couldn't blow it. It was simply adding a few pre-cooked items together.

Cheap - when one of the key ingredients is Ramen, you know it will be reasonably priced.

Versatile - you can make it your own or clean through your kitchen by swapping out the meat, mixing in different spices, even changing noodles for rice.


I liked the fact that we just had to open some bags, cut some chicken, throw a few ingredients together and we were done.

Anything that involves chicken and stir-fry can be put into my belly.

This was an incredibly cheap meal.

I liked that we were able to make the Teriyaki sauce ourselves.

Very filling.


What we'd change:

Flavor - the teriyaki sauce we made was very good, but I would like to try it with some kick - somehow make it spicier.

Meat - Ah, the age old debate of white meat or dark. Ronnie's into DRY white meat, so the chicken was a bit dry. I'd like to try it with dark meat (probably won't happen though!!)

Noodles - I would cook the noodles a little bit less before adding them to the cooked veggies and chicken. They ended up a little on the soggy side. Perhaps undercooking them before adding them to everything else and allowing them to finish cooking once added to the veggies and chicken would have helped.


Next time, I'd like to cut the chicken into smaller pieces.

I wouldn't mind a little bit of heat in this dish.

I wish Bird's Eye would pay attention to the random vegetable roots I kept biting into.

I'd mess around with the Teriyaki sauce a bit more and possibly coat the Ramen noodles first, before adding the vegetables.

I wouldn't mind trying it with rice instead of Ramen


Here's our overall rating (with 1 being the worst meal we've ever had and 10 being the best):


Mandi's Rating: 8

Ronnie's Rating: 6.5

Again, if you guys have any suggestions on how this is laid out or what you guys would like to see answered/done differently, please let us know :)