Szechuan Pork Stir-Fry
with snow peas / carrots / rice
Using ground meat and lots of vegetables, this stir-fry, which was originally published in 2020, 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
- Rice, uncooked white or brown - 1 cup
- 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 leaves - 2 Tbsp, chopped
- Oil, cooking - 1 Tbsp
- Snow peas - 8 oz (sub snap peas)
- Pork, ground - 1 lb
- Lime juice - 2 tsp
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Rice - (Skip if made ahead for Tuesday.) For white rice, rinse until clear. Fill a saucepan or Dutch oven (or rice cooker) with rice, water (use 2:1 ratio for water to rice), and some salt. Cover with lid and bring to a boil. Once water boils, stir, lower heat to a low-medium, and cover. Check white rice after ~20 min; brown at ~45 min. Rice is done when it's absorbed all the water. If it's not done, leave the cover on until all water has been absorbed. Take cover off to release steam and fluff with a wooden spoon after 5 minutes. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Ginger / Garlic / Carrots (if not pre-shredded) - Prep as directed. Combine ginger and garlic. Store carrots separately. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- 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 rice was made ahead, reheat in the microwave.
- Serve stir-fry over rice. Enjoy!
Nutrition Facts
Reviews
Ratings
Most Helpful
If I make this again, I’ll make extra sauce and leave the tofu to marinate awhile to impart some flavour.
1 Helpful26 reviews
I thought the sauce was really good. I had to leave out the chili garlic and add it to my plate separately because my husband doesn’t like as much spice as I do. If I make it again I will probably use green peas because snap peas always turn out bitter and stringy for me.
0 HelpfulWould have been great if I had not had dyslexia and switched the amount of stock with the amount of soy sauce LOL. Very quick recipe using pre-shredded carrots and ready to eat snow peas. Also used ready rice so very fast. Will keep handy as a basic recipe that I can switch very easily.
0 HelpfulThis was perfectly fine (especially for how little effort was needed) but it’s not my favorite stir-fry recipe from CS. If I make it again, I’ll add broccoli and mushrooms for more veggie variety and maybe play around with the sauce.
0 HelpfulAdded shallots and green onions that needed to be used up. Substituted Korean gochujang for chili garlic sauce. Quick, easy and delicious!
0 Helpful