Today I’m bringing you a simple, tasty stir fry recipe with a plant-based homemade teriyaki sauce. It’s ready in just 30 minutes and a great recipe for mixing it up mid week by throwing this together for a quick meal. It also serves great as leftovers so you can pre-make it and save it for future meals. If you try out this recipe, please share it with me by commenting here or on my YouTube channel, or even tagging me in a photo on Instagram @plantsnotplastic. I read every comment and love hearing from you. Enjoy!
Delicious Teriyaki Stir Fry
Equipment
- knife & cutting board
- large saute pan
Ingredients
- ~6-8 cups mixed veggies celery, bell pepper, bean sprouts, zucchini, broccoli, green beans, mushrooms, Bok Choy, pineapple, etc. in whatever combination you prefer; chopped and/or sliced to approximately the same size
- 1 medium yellow onion diced
Stir Fry Sauce
- 1 1/4 cups soy sauce sub tamari for gluten free
- 1 1/4 cups vegetable broth or water
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tbsp fresh ginger minced or grated
- 2 tsp sesame seeds
- 2 tsp vinegar distilled white or rice wine
- 2 tbsp sugar optional
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
Instructions
- In a large sauté pan over medium heat, saute the veggies, starting with the hardest veggies [note#1] and cook for 3-4 minutes.
- Next add your medium toughness veggies [note#1] and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
- Then add your soft veggies [note#1] and cook for an additional 2-4 minutes, until everything has softened slightly but still maintains some of it's firmness and texture.
- In the meantime, mix together your sauce by combining all ingredients but the cornstarch, mix well, then make a slurry with the cornstarch and a small bit of water and set both the sauce and slurry aside.
- Once the soft veggies have cooked down, add your stir fry sauce and bring everything to a boil over high heat. Add your slurry slowly, mixing constantly to thicken.
- Remove from the heat and it's ready to serve over rice.
- Enjoy!
Notes
- Hard veggies are going to be things like celery, carrots, broccoli stems, soft veggies will be things like zucchini, mushrooms and bean sprouts, and medium veggies will be anything in between. How long you cook each round of veggies is really up to you, just think of how soft or firm you want all the veggies to be, use your best judgement and don't worry about it too much!
Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Nikita. Welcome back to Plants Not Plastic. Today we are going to be making a teriyaki stir fry.
Today I’m gonna show you how to make an easy stir fry that is delicious, inexpensive, simple, healthy, whole foods, plant based, low fat, oil free and ready in just 30 minutes.
Before we get started, if you’re not already subscribed and you like this video, click the subscribe button and the bell so you can get notifications when I upload a new video. I release new content weekly, would love to have you stick around and appreciate your support! You can also connect with me on social media for day-to-day content and subscribe to my blog for recipes right to your inbox. And give this video a thumbs up! It helps me out a lot and lets me know to keep making videos like this one.
This recipe started with the stir fry sauce, and is another one that I found early on in my plant-based journey. It’s packed full of flavor, even more packed full of healthy veggies, can be changed up with whatever mix of veggies you choose, and it is best enjoyed fresh but can serve great as leftovers for meal prep or packed lunches.
Here’s everything you’ll need to make this recipe. I’ll also leave everything in the description box below along with a link to the blog post with the nutrition label and a printable recipe card. And as always, this recipe will cost you less to make, have more fiber, you’ll get to eat more of it for the same or less calories than a non-vegan or processed vegan alternative and it tastes great. So let’s dive in!
You’ll start with your veggie prep. I typically enjoy broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms and celery as my go-to base, but tend to throw in other veggies to mix it up depending on how I’m feeling. Whatever you choose, you just want to cut everything to about the same size and organize it from your hardest to softest veggies since that’s how you’re going to be cooking them down. Hard veggies are going to be things like celery, carrots, and broccoli stems, where soft veggies are things like zucchini, mushrooms, and bell peppers, and then you want to prep your onion and garlic, and do your best not to cry while doing so. By the way, you can add your garlic to the stir fry sauce rather than to the veggies, which is what I normally do, but I spaced on this and added it with the onion, so I just put it in with everything else and it still turned out fine.
After you’ve got everything cut, you’re goin to cook the veggies down in that same order, hard to soft, starting with your onion for a few minutes to soften them, then the hard veggies for another 3-4 minutes, followed by the medium for another 2-3 and the soft for a final 2-4 minutes. I will say, it’s pretty easy to overcook your veggies for this recipe, so I would air on the side of less rather than more, after you’ve gotten those onions cooked.
During this cooking time, you’re going to mix your sauce together on the side to throw in at the end.
To make the sauce, throw together soy sauce or tamari, vegetable broth or water, sesame seeds, vinegar, garlic, freshly grated ginger and optional sugar. Separately, mix together your cornstarch and a little bit of water to make a slurry.
Three notes on the sauce. If you want a teriyaki sauce, you are not going to get that same sweet, delicious flavor without adding sugar. Teriyaki sauce is inherently sweet and it just won’t taste the same without it, but you can use a sugar substitute like maple syrup, date sugar or date paste instead if you don’t like using sugar. Second, if you opt for little or no sugar, you are going to end up with a sauce that is still flavorful, but is going to be a bit more bitter and savory. My husband loves our stir fry this way with just a little bit of sugar and says it reminds him of Yoshinoya, if you’ve been to that restaurant, but I’m personally a huge fan of sweet teriyaki fan and don’t think this recipe is the same without the sugar. Point being, base how you want make the sauce off of your own personal diet and flavor preferences, play around with it to find out what you like best, and maybe even get two recipes in one if you like it both ways.
And third, this recipe makes a very saucey stir fry because I really love to have extra sauce to coat and flavor my rice once I serve it up, but if you’re a sauce-lite person, I would cut the sauce recipe by 3/4 to half to barely coat your veggies.
Once your veggies are all softened, add your sauce to the pan and bring everything to a boil over a high heat. Once it’s boiling, at your slurry slowly, stirring constantly to thicken before turning off the heat. And from here, it’s ready to serve over rice and enjoy hot, fresh and flavorful.
We tend to batch cook meals for the week and I really love this recipe for mixing it up mid-week. It’s so easy to cook up a pot of rice while I’m already in the kitchen whipping up this recipe, and we can enjoy it for a hump day dinner with leftovers to take to enjoy during work the next day. The sauce is so flavorful and coats the rice and vegetables wonderfully, the veggies are fresh and the whole dish comes together to make a filling and satisfying meal. And if you’re trying to stick to a whole food plant based diet, it is just one more recipe that you can add to your collection.
If you want to know how to make perfect rice that is way better than the package directions to go with this recipe, check out either my white rice or brown rice recipe videos. That’s it for today, thank you for watching and see you next time. Bye!
So that’s it for today’s recipe. I hope you try this one out. If you do let me know in the comments. Also if you want to know how to make perfect rice that’s way better than the package directions to go with this recipe, check out either my white rice or brown rice recipe videos. Thanks for watching and see you next time. Bye!
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