Asian chicken salad – Clean Out The Refrigerator Meals

asian-chicken-salad

Yesterday was one of those days. OK, this week was one of those weeks: I didn’t make my usually weekly menu and plan for the dinners each night, so when I got to last night’s meal (late, after Owen’s karate class!), I was thinking of opening a can of soup and being done with it.

Inspiration struck, though, and I came up with one of my famous clean-out-the-refrigerator meals … you know, those meals that come out spectacular and unique because you didn’t plan them, you used no recipe and you used only the ingredients you had on the house.

Luckily, I had been to BJ’s last weekend and had a decent amount of veggies left over, and some ancient oranges that finally found a use.

Asian Chicken Salad

Marinade Ingredients:

1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons tamari (or soy sauce, or the like)
1 tablespoon frozen orange juice concentrate
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips

Mix the first four ingredients, the add to chicken and marinate. Here’s another speedy trick: I received one of those speed marinators for Christmas, the kind that you suck all the air out of so it opens up the pores of the meat and lets it absorb the flavors quickly. Well, it works, and I only marinated my chicken strips for about ten minutes, while I was chopping veggies. Then I stir-fried the chicken over medium high heat until cooked through.

Salad Ingredients:

baby Romaine lettuce mix
chopped red pepper
carrots, sliced on the diagonal
small florets of broccoli
sugar snap peas
fresh chopped cilantro
sesame seeds
one orange, cut into small segments

You can use whatever salad fixin’s you’ve got handy, but I know I was wishing I had sprouts and radishes, too.

Dressing Ingredients:

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons tamari
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons olive oil

Toss salad ingredients with mixed dressing, top with cooked chicken, toss again and serve.

This was easy, fast and prepared with the crazy-good stuff I had sitting in my fridge. Not every clean-out-the-refrigerator meal is chock-full of fresh veggies, but in this case, it worked.