Pantry Meal: Peanut Butter Noodles with Broccoli and Chicken
This is a meal that I can make at almost any given time, the ingredients are part of my pantry. I like to keep a well stocked pantry, all of the basics (and not so basics) are always around when I want them. There are four parts to this meal: sauce, protein, veggies, noodles. This meal is easiest to assemble when the protein/veg/noodles are leftover or precooked and you just have to add sauce. Pour sauce over cooked noodles tossing with chicken, broccoli and peas. Garnish with chopped nuts, cilantro, and sliced red chili if available.
Sauce:
To make the sauce, begin by heating broth. Combine all other ingredients in a medium bowl at room temperature. Whisk hot broth into peanut butter until it becomes a smooth sauce to coat noodles.
-1/2 cup peanut butter. Crunchy adds a nice texture but creamy is good as well. Just be sure that your pb is of the natural variety. These contain only peanuts & salt, and occasionally honey, molasses and palm oil. In this case, less is more.
-1Tb tahini
-1/2 cup soy
-1Tb fish sauce (optional)
-2Tb mirin (or honey)
-2 cups broth, veggie or chicken. Use more to adjust consistency, richness, and volume of sauce
1/2lb pasta. This is a great use for whole wheat pasta but you could use anything from linguine, rigatoni, to rice noodles.
1-2 cups protein, sliced or diced cooked chicken. Think leftover grilled or rotisserie chicken, steak or even tofu.
1-2 cups veggies:
-1 crown of broccoli, this is as fresh as it gets. If I do not have fresh broccoli then frozen is perfect too.
-1/2 cup peas or edamame, fresh, frozen or canned
A few notes…
This pasta can be served room temperature or hot. The cooler the temperature this will be served, the thinner the sauce should be. This will thicken considerably when cool. The next day noodles should be thinned with more warm broth.
This is a great kid friendly dish. To serve at a barbeque I might use rigatoni, omit the meat and add halved red grapes and thinly sliced red onion.
This sauce can be short cut even more by using a teriyaki sauce like Soy Vay, just add broth and peanut butter.
Nancy Warner 