Honey Mustard Chicken Stir Fry

Three weeks into the new normal. I want to start there because the new normal is the engine running underneath everything I cook now, and I want to put on the page what the new normal looks like before I get to the recipe.

The new normal is two settings at the kitchen table instead of three. The new normal is Mama at her shift Monday through Saturday and on the back porch with iced tea on Sunday afternoons because she has been giving herself one Sunday a month off in the new year. The new normal is my Sonic shifts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday mornings, and school the rest of the time, and home-ec teaching with Mrs. Rivera on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after sixth period. The new normal is the radio on quiet in the kitchen at dinner and a kind of careful peace between Mama and me at the table that I have not had to maintain before but that I am learning to.

The new normal is the Saturday morning drive to the Tulsa County Youthful Offender Unit at eight in the morning, the lobby line for forty minutes, the metal detector and the lockers, the visiting room with the small round metal tables, my brother in the orange uniform, the thirty-minute window to ask each other about the week, the goodbye, the long drive home in the silence Mama and I have decided we do not need to fill on the way back. The new normal is the basil plant on the windowsill that I have been watering twice a week and that has put out four new leaves since Mrs. Henderson brought it over.

The new normal is also the small good news that has started to come out of the inside. Cody enrolled in the GED program inside on Monday night. The program runs Tuesday and Thursday evenings for six months and is taught by a woman named Mrs. Kim from the Tulsa Community College extension. Cody is the youngest student in the program by about three years. He told me about Mrs. Kim at the visit on Saturday. He said, quote, she is like Mrs. Rivera, but for grown men. I am going to write that sentence down because he said it with the kind of small affection that says he is going to be fine in that classroom. Marcus, his cellmate, signed up too. They are going to study together in the cell after lights-out, by the dim hall light that bleeds in under the cell door, which Cody said is enough to read by if you hold the page right.

That is the new normal. And inside the new normal there has to be dinner, and the dinner this week was a honey mustard chicken stir-fry I made on Sunday afternoon as the Sunday batch-cook, and I want to walk you through it.

The recipe is from Cafe Delites. Honey mustard chicken stir-fry: bite-sized pieces of chicken thigh marinated in a honey-Dijon-soy sauce, stir-fried in a hot pan with broccoli and bell pepper, served over rice. The whole dinner happens in twenty-five minutes including the marinade time, and the leftovers carried Mama and me through Monday and Tuesday dinners plus my Tuesday Sonic-shift lunch.

The math: chicken thighs from the markdown rack, $3.20 for a six-pack. A small bottle of honey from Walmart, $2.49 (will last me two months). A small jar of Dijon mustard, already in the fridge from the Christmas Eve dinner. Soy sauce, $0.99 for a small bottle from Aldi. A lemon, $0.49. Fresh ginger, $0.40 for a knob (I freeze the rest, grated frozen ginger keeps for months). A head of broccoli, $0.99. A red bell pepper, $0.79. Two cups of long-grain rice, $0.30 from the bag. Garlic from the bulb, free. Total: about $9.65 for ingredients, but the honey and the soy sauce and the Dijon are pantry investments that will get used many more times. Adjusted cost-per-serving across three dinners: about $1.07.

The technique is the marinade and the hot-pan timing. You whisk together a quarter cup of honey, two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, two tablespoons of soy sauce, the juice of half a lemon, two cloves of minced garlic, and a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger. You divide the marinade in half. One half goes into a bowl with the chicken pieces, tossed to coat, and rests on the counter for thirty minutes. The other half is your finishing sauce, kept aside.

While the chicken marinates, you cut the broccoli into florets and the bell pepper into strips, and you cook two cups of rice on the back burner the way I have learned to (rinse, two cups of rice, four cups of water, a pinch of salt, bring to a boil, cover, reduce to low, simmer twenty minutes, do not lift the lid).

You heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large skillet (I use the cast iron) over medium-high heat. The pan needs to be hot. You add the marinated chicken pieces in a single layer and you do not stir for two minutes — the chicken needs to sear on the bottom, not steam. You stir, and cook three more minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through. You add the broccoli florets and the bell pepper strips, and you stir-fry for two minutes. You pour in the reserved marinade. You toss for one more minute, until the sauce thickens slightly and coats everything in a glossy honey-mustard glaze.

You serve over the rice in shallow bowls. You can sprinkle sliced scallions or sesame seeds on top if you have them. I had scallions from the windowsill plant.

The kitchen smelled, when this dinner was on the stove, like the kind of Chinese takeout place that is run by somebody’s grandmother and that has been on the same corner of a strip mall for twenty years. The smell is sweet and salty and slightly sharp, with the ginger working underneath everything. Mama got home Sunday at six-fifteen. She walked into the kitchen. She said, baby, what country are we eating from tonight. I said, I think this one we are calling honey mustard, Mama. She sat down at the kitchen table. She ate the whole bowl. She said, this is the kind of dinner I would buy at a restaurant. I said, it is, Mama. It cost me $6.20 to make for the night. She laughed. The laugh has been coming back. I am keeping count of those too.

The leftovers carried Mama and me through Monday and Tuesday. The dishes are washed. The basil plant is still alive. The X marks on the calendar I have stopped keeping. The new normal is starting to feel like a normal, which is not the same as feeling like the right thing, but is the thing we have, and the thing we are going to keep cooking for.

The recipe is below, the way Cafe Delites wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the divided marinade — half on the raw chicken to flavor it, half kept aside as the finishing sauce, because raw-chicken-marinade is not safe to use as a sauce without cooking. The hot pan and the no-stir for the first two minutes are the technique. Make this on a Sunday for three weeknights of dinner. The honey mustard glaze does not get less good in the fridge.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 3

Ingredients

1 1/4 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 cups broccoli florets
1 cup snap peas
1 medium bell pepper, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt and black pepper to taste
Cooked rice or noodles, for serving

Instructions

Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, Dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and red pepper flakes if using. Set aside.
Season the chicken. Pat the chicken pieces dry and season lightly with salt and black pepper.
Cook the chicken. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add the chicken in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, for 3 minutes. Stir and cook another 2–3 minutes until golden and cooked through. Transfer to a plate.
Stir fry the vegetables. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil to the same pan. Add the broccoli, snap peas, and bell pepper. Stir fry over high heat for 3–4 minutes until just tender but still bright. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more.
Combine and coat. Return the chicken to the pan and pour the honey mustard sauce over everything. Toss to coat and cook 1–2 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly and everything is heated through.
Serve. Spoon over cooked rice or noodles and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Honey Mustard Chicken Stir Fry — The Sunday Batch-Cook for the New Two-Person Normal