Szechuan Pork Stir-Fry
with snow peas / carrots / barley
Using ground meat and lots of vegetables, this stir-fry is about as fast and colorful as they come. Feel free to increase the spice if you'd like.
Smarts: It will seem like a lot of vegetables when you first add them to the pan, but the carrots will shrink down considerably as they cook. Just keep cooking them until they are very tender and reduced in quantity.
Ingredients
- Ginger - 2 tsp, grated
- Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
- Stock, any type - 1/2 cup
- Soy sauce, low-sodium - 1/4 cup
- Cornstarch - 1 Tbsp
- Brown sugar - 1 Tbsp
- Vinegar, rice - 2 Tbsp
- Oil, toasted sesame - 2 tsp
- Chili garlic sauce - 1 tsp (sub any hot sauce)
- Carrots - 10 oz, shredded (look for pre-shredded)
- Cilantro - 2 Tbsp, chopped
- Oil, cooking - 1 Tbsp
- Snow peas - 8 oz (sub snap peas)
- Pork, ground - 1 lb
- Lime juice - 2 tsp
- Barley, hulled and uncooked - 2/3 cup
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Barley - (Double if making Thursday's meal.) Bring a saucepan of water to boil. Salt water generously and add barley. Simmer for 45 to 55 minutes until tender but not soggy. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Ginger / Garlic - Prep as directed. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Carrots - If not pre-shredded, shred with a box grater or food processor.
- Make sauce - Whisk together ginger, garlic, stock, soy sauce, cornstarch, brown sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, and chili garlic sauce. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Cilantro - Chop cilantro.
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Make
- Heat a wok or large saute pan with cooking oil over medium-high heat. Add carrots and snow peas and saute until tender, 6 to 7 minutes.
- Move vegetables to one side of the pan and add pork to the other side. Saute pork, breaking it apart as it cooks, until cooked through, ~5 minutes. Stir pork into vegetables.
- Give sauce a good stir (or shake if using a jar with a lid) to be sure that the cornstarch fully dissolves.
- Pour sauce over stir-fry and bring to a simmer. Cook everything together until sauce thickens, ~3 minutes.
- Add lime juice and cilantro to stir-fry.
- If barley was made ahead, reheat in the microwave (reserve half if doubled).
- Serve stir-fry over barley. Enjoy!
Nutrition Facts
Reviews
Ratings
Most Helpful
It was easy to make. The barley took awhile to make so it is a bit time consuming. We left out the chili garlic sauce so it wouldn't be spicy for our kids. But we added Sriracha on top of our plate. Definitely added it to our favorites.
1 Helpful36 reviews
Very tasty! We made the original but served it over cauliflower rice. I replaced with snow peas with in a small onion, frozen corn and frozen peas.
0 HelpfulHusband & I are doing meatless days. This is the first time eating tofu in probably over 10 years. I don't like it. Nothing against the recipe (I have made it in meat forms and love it), but I am not a tofu person
0 HelpfulYummy! Added a bunch more sriracha since we like things spicy and used quinoa we had on hand which went very well. Easy weeknight meal and great as leftovers
0 HelpfulLoved this. Not fond of barley so made rice instead. Family considers it one of the best recipes we've ever made off CookSmarts.
0 HelpfulThis was a good one! I left out the honey and used hot sauce instead of chili-garlic sauce to be Whole30 compliant. I also cheated and used a bag of frozen peas and carrots as well as frozen cauliflower rice.
0 Helpful