Tuesday Dinners

Leftover Stir Fry

More a methodology than a recipe.

⏲️ Prep Time
15 minutes

⏲️ Cook Time
15 minutes

🍴 Serves
4

Ingredients

Stir Fry Sauce

  • 2 tablespoon cornstarch/flour
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons sesame oil
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 tablespoon ground ginger (fresh or otherwise)
  • 1 tablespoon honey (optional)
  • 2 tablespoons chili crisp (optional)

“Mains” (all optional)

  • Protein that can be chopped small/ground
  • Vegetables (peppers, onions, peas, carrots)
  • Carb of some kind (cooked rice, noodles)
  • Cabbage (shredded)
  • Green onion

Directions

  1. Chop all your vegetables
  2. Combine all sauce ingredients and set aside
  3. Cook your protein with any hardy vegetables
  4. Once protein is cooked then add in your less hardy vegetable and any carbs (if applicable)
  5. Add your sauce to protein/vegetables, cook for a couple of minutes
  6. Add your leafy ingredients, cook until combined

Step By Step Directions

There will come a time in your life where you’re hungry, don’t quite have enough ingredients to make a specific dish and can’t order food. Enter “leftover” stir fry (because “garbage” stir fry is unappetizing). A simple combination of ingredients that when combined taste good.

First, take stock of what you have to eat. In my case I had the following:

  • Two peppers
  • One and a half onions
  • Pound of ground beef
  • Half eaten bag of coleslaw mix

Things I wish I had:

  • Rice
  • Eggs

Things I realized:

  • I really need to go to the grocery store

So you’re going to want to chop your vegetables until they are a nice, uniform size. Smaller ingredients will taste better, but they will take longer to prepare.

Now it’s time to combine all your “sauce” ingredients and then add your garlic and ginger. You can add them to the pot directly later on and save a dish, or allow the garlic and ginger to marinate a little bit.

Add your protein and any hardy vegetables to your pot. I like to use the fat from my protein to help cook the vegetables, and I like long cooking times on onions so I added the beef and onion first.

After your protein has cooked down and is cooked through then add any less hearty vegetables/any carbs that you might want. Everything at this point should require less time to cook then the previous ingredients, and because it’s already chopped you should be able to just throw it right in.

Now we add the sauce that we prepared earlier. Once added it should combine and begin to be absorbed by the other ingredients. If you still find a fair amount of liquid in your pot then add some more flour/cornstarch until it’s as thick as you would like.

Lastly, you’ll want to add your “leafy” ingredients. These take the least amount of time to cook, so we should only have a couple of minutes left after adding these ingredients.

That’s it. Should be an easy meal you can make with little to no prep that will taste pretty good every time.

Enjoy.

Variations

  • This entire recipe is a variation, just do what you want.

Unsolicited Feedback

  • AP: I like takeout better.
  • RM: Why couldn’t you have had better leftover ingredients?
  • SL: I guess with enough siracha it tastes fine.