Konjac Noodle Stir Fry

This dish follows no exact recipe that you might find in a cookbook. I’m pretty much off the reservation with this one, but it’s pretty darned good. I’m one of those guys who’s not a serious cook and I have no formal training. I’m pretty sure that professional chefs are looking at this and saying to themselves… “WTF” is this idiot doing now ? I’m just the kind of guy who throws things in a pan and hopes for the best. I don’t know how to pair flavors well, or what exactly goes with whatever food I’m cooking.

My only rules are that it has to taste good, have zero chemicals in it that I can’t pronounce, and it has to be healthy enough not to kill me. So no fancy blowfish or snails or anything of that nature. No bugs either.

 I’m just the kind of guy who throws things in a pan and hopes for the best. I don’t know how to pair flavors well, or what exactly goes with whatever food I’m cooking. My only rules are that it has to taste good, have zero chemicals in it that I can’t pronounce, and it has to be healthy enough not to kill me.

I start off with about 2 ounces of ground chicken and brown it in a bit of olive oil in a wok on my stove.

I slice off a piece of ginger root about the size of my thumb, peel it and dice it. This goes right into the pan with the chicken. The carrot gets 5 minutes on high pressure in my InstantPot.

Next, I cut up two stems of green onions and add them to the pan, stirring on the lowest heat setting on my stove. At this point I start adding a little water from a cup so I can keep everything steaming without oil to prevent it from sticking to the pan.

I’m getting a decent base to work with here……

Now is when things get “confusing” if you are expecting a traditional Asian dish. I like to add bell peppers to my pan. Red, green, yellow bell peppers, along with some diced red onions. Then I put in a scoop of pico de gallo for a bite of Tex-Mex flavor. The pico has more diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, and jalapeños.

At this point I keep stirring everything around while it cooks on very low heat. I add a little more water so nothing burns and sticks to the pan…. It’s just a tablespoon or so just to keep the steam going. At this time I start adding my spices. Turmeric, black pepper, smoked paprika, oregano. I told you this ain’t a traditional Asian dish. I’m just throwing stuff at the pan.

This is the next item to go in. Chili oil, garlic, and hot peppers. Maybe a tablespoon or two stirred in the mix. I’m a fan of hot peppers and spicy foods as long as they’re not insane.

I decided to chop up and add some cilantro. You can skip this if you’d like. Some folks have the misfortune of having genetics that dictates cilantro tastes like soap. Fortunately for me, I do not. This goes into the pan last because I don’t want it to wilt too much and get soggy from the steaming.

Just after I added chopped cilantro, I put in a few handfuls of alfalfa sprouts. I added these at the same time basically as the cilantro because I didn’t want them to get too hot and soggy. Alfalfa sprouts kind of taste like grass if you use them raw. I know some people like the raw foods because of the nutrients, but I like my sprouts slightly cooked.

Just where do I get my sprouts ? Alfalfa and beans ? I start them myself at home in a windowsill. I’m paranoid about getting food poisoning from bacteria. I read that store bought sprouts may be contaminated, so my solution was to do these myself. I rotate the containers around weekly for small batches as I need them. I’ll have to probably do a blog on how this is done.

While everything is simmering and steaming in the pan, I break out my container of Konjac noodles. Since I “discovered” the benefits of these — I’m just about addicted to them. I’m not using the straight noodles, these are the ones that have oat bran in them for extra fiber. Konjac noodles are made from a plant grown in Asian and have little to no carbohydrates in them and very little in the way of calories. I think maybe 25 calories per serving. What they actually do is soak up the flavors of whatever you serve with them, and they provide a lot of extra fiber. On their own they taste pretty plain and they’re not impressive. Having said that — they’re great for diabetics or folks who want to go on a keto diet.

Two of the small Konjac noodle packets go right into the wok pan once I rinse them off.

Once I begin tossing and stirring the noodles with the other ingredients in the pan, here’s where it gets confusing again. I add in plenty of this — zhoug hot sauce. It’s not Asian, it’s Middle Eastern. But it contains a LOT of the stuff I truly LOVE. It has a base of extra virgin olive oil, cilantro, garlic, poblano peppers, scotch bonnet peppers, jalapeño peppers, blue agave nectar, lemon juice, cumin, pea flowers, turmeric, cardamom, chipotle, and last but not least — a hint of ghost peppers. I don’t understand why it’s called a Middle Eastern sauce because of all the peppers in it, but this stuff adds some “whang” to this dish.

Here it is. A conglomerate of seemingly unusual ingredients in one dish, but the tastes are amazing for me. I’d say this is probably not something that everyone would enjoy with all the peppers and hot stuff in it. Keep in mind though that I’m the kind of guy who could sit and eat hot sauce with a kitchen spoon because I really like it. In smaller amounts mixed in with a dish like this it adds a bit of kick to the flavors. I don’t have the words to describe how it tastes as I’m not really that eloquent. You have the crunchy carrots, and the alfalfa seed pods, the softer greens of the cilantro and alfalfa shoots themselves, the tang of onion and garlic, and the bulk of the tomatoes and bell peppers in the pico. I ALWAYS make sure to have some form of protein and fiber in anything I cook at home because it seems to act with the carbohydrates and slows them down in absorption. I don’t get sugar spikes in my readings anymore.