stir fried vegetables with chicken mince for a healthy meal

Light vegetable based meals with a little protein thrown in is really easy to whip up. I have numerous recipes of stir fries on this blog and keep trying new things as the season changes. Seasonal vegetables are the best as I always insist, combining them together the way you like it shouldn't be very difficult. Here in this one pot meal of stir fried mixed vegetables with chicken mince, a meal that is very light a fresh and yet very very filling.

A friend was asking me recently about how to cook vegetables with different textures together and yet keep their own individual textures intact. There are a few recipes where I dump everything together and cook them all in one go but some vegetables need extra care when being cooked in a one pot meal. This recipe of stir fried vegetables with chicken mince will be a mush if you cook everything together. And while onion and tomatoes taste great when they get mushy in a recipe where there is a lot of chicken mince, mushy cooked veggies will taste horrible if there is more than 400 gm vegetables and 100 gm chicken mince. You get the drift.

Let's see how to keep the broccoli crisp like a salad, mushrooms soft and Zucchini with a bite in this recipe while the green garlic also remains fresh.

ingredients..
(2 light meal portions)

chicken mince 100-120 gm
broccoli florets 200 gm
zucchini slices (bite sized) 150 gm
mushrooms  chopped into quarters 150 gm
green garlic shoots 30-40 gm or 2-3 tbsp
marjoram dried or fresh to taste (or use any herb you like)
butter 2 tsp
salt and pepper to taste

procedure

Heat the butter and add the mushrooms before it melts. Add slat and pepper and stir fry on medium for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken mince and keep stirring till it starts changing colour, the mushrooms will keep cooking along with it and imparting their flavours to the mince.

After about 5-10 minutes depending on how coarse the mince is, the chicken mince will be cooked and yet will remain moist. Add the zucchini, marjoram and chopped green garlic and keep stirring for 4-5 minutes.

Meanwhile boil water in a separate pan, add a little salt and dump the broccoli in it. Dip them for a minute, drain quickly and rinse in running cold water. Drain well and then add to the almost done stir fry. Mix well and serve hot.

While this stir fry is quite filling and satiating, it tastes great too. Each vegetable retains it's texture, mushrooms lend their juices and flavours to the chicken mince and zucchini and broccoli retain the much desired bite in them.

You might like to add some tomatoes or red bell peppers too in this stir fry or may be replace broccoli with cauliflowers and zucchini with turnips of knol khol, just go by the textures of vegetables you like. Some more herbs and may be some chilli heat too might suit the mood some day.This recipe is just a suggestion of how your dinner can be gluten free, light and filling at the same time with controlled calories too.

You know travel food makes me count my calories sometimes. Have been traveling so much in the past 2 months that I now want to stay back for sometime, cook my own food and relish everything in leisure.

Simpler foods rule in such times.