Honey Soy Chicken Stir Fry

New Year. 2017. I spent New Year's Eve alone in my condo, which sounds sad but was a choice — a deliberate, careful choice to end the year in the space where I began my Korean cooking journey, in the kitchen where I made my first kimchi and my first pot roast and my first failed bulgogi. I cooked tteokguk — proper New Year's tteokguk this time, on the actual holiday — and ate it at midnight while the fireworks popped outside the window and the Space Needle did its annual light show, visible from my bathroom window if I stood on tiptoe. Eating tteokguk on New Year's is Korean tradition: you eat it to mark the turning of the year, and some say you don't officially become a year older until you eat your tteokguk. So at midnight, standing in my kitchen with a bowl of rice cake soup, I became twenty-three in the Korean way. I was already twenty-three in the American way. Two ages, two new years, two calendars, one bowl of soup. The math of adoption.

The year in review: I learned to cook. That's the headline, but the subtext is everything. I learned to cook Korean food, which means I learned to be Korean, which means I learned to grieve and recover and build and claim and be angry and be grateful and be real. I went from takeout menus to homemade kimchi. I went from a silent kitchen to an onggi pot fermenting on the counter. I went from not knowing what gochugaru is to using it on everything. I went from being fine to being in therapy, which is the opposite of fine and infinitely better. I went from a woman who didn't know who she was to a woman who is in the process of finding out, and the process is messy and ongoing and involves a lot of crying over soup, but it's mine. It's the first thing in my life that's truly mine — not Karen's, not David's, not Amazon's — mine.

January in Seattle: rain, darkness, the post-holiday quiet that settles over the city like a hangover. I went back to work on Monday. The office was sparse — people still on PTO, the energy low and contemplative. I coded quietly, fixed a few bugs, ate my dosirak lunch (rice, kimchi, leftover tteokguk), and thought about what's next. Twenty-three dishes learned. A Korean vocabulary of maybe three hundred words. Nine months of therapy. What's the next iteration? Where does the project go from here?

I think the answer is depth. Year one was breadth — learning as many dishes as possible, building a repertoire, proving to myself that I could cook Korean food at all. Year two should be depth — perfecting the dishes I know, going deeper into technique, maybe taking a cooking class, maybe finally mustering the courage to walk into a Korean community space and say, "I'm Korean. I'm adopted. I'm learning. Can I be here?" The thought terrifies me. But the Korean restaurant terrified me too, nine months ago, and I walked in. The therapy terrified me, and I called. The pattern is clear: the things that terrify me are the things I need to do.

Dr. Yoon's first session of the new year. She asked me to set an intention for 2017. I said, "Depth." She asked me to elaborate. I said, "Last year was about starting. This year I want to go deeper — deeper into the food, deeper into the language, deeper into the identity work. I want to stop skating on the surface of Korean and actually swim." She said, "Swimming requires letting go of the edge." I said, "I know." She said, "Are you ready?" I said, "No." She said, "Good. Ready is overrated. Start anyway."

Start anyway. My therapist's New Year's resolution for me, offered in four words that I'm going to carry through 2017 like a talisman. Start anyway. Cook the dish you don't know. Say the Korean word you'll mispronounce. Walk into the room you're not sure you belong in. Start anyway. The tteokguk is eaten. The new year has begun. I'm starting.

Tteokguk was the midnight ceremony, but the everyday work of year two looks more like this: a weeknight pan, soy sauce and honey, the particular sizzle of chicken hitting a hot skillet. The Honey Soy Chicken Stir Fry became a staple in my rotation because it sits right at the intersection of where I am — not yet deep enough into Korean technique to make the dishes I want to make, but far enough along to reach instinctively for ginger, for soy, for the umami-forward flavors that feel like home now in a way they didn’t a year ago. Dr. Yoon said start anyway; this is what starting anyway looks like on a Tuesday in January.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced into bite-sized pieces
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup broccoli florets
3 green onions, sliced (whites and greens separated)
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
Sesame seeds, for garnish
Steamed white rice, for serving

Instructions

Make the sauce. Whisk together the soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, rice vinegar, garlic, and ginger in a small bowl. In a separate small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and water to form a slurry and set aside.
Cook the chicken. Heat the neutral oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the chicken pieces in a single layer and cook without stirring for 3–4 minutes until golden on the bottom. Stir and cook another 2–3 minutes until cooked through. Transfer to a plate.
Stir fry the vegetables. In the same pan, add the bell pepper, broccoli, and the white parts of the green onions. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, for 3–4 minutes until the vegetables are just tender but still have some bite.
Combine and sauce. Return the chicken to the pan. Pour the sauce over everything and toss to coat. Add the cornstarch slurry and stir constantly for 1–2 minutes until the sauce thickens and clings to the chicken and vegetables.
Serve. Spoon over steamed rice and garnish with sliced green onion tops and sesame seeds. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Honey Soy Chicken Stir Fry — The Year I Learned to Cook Korean, and Everything That Came With It