Minced Chicken and Lettuce Wraps

This has to be one of my favourite Chinese dishes but I have never found the time or patience to recreate it myself. Having finished work a bit earlier than usual, I decided this was the perfect dinner for the evening so popped along to Tesco to get the remaining ingredients needed.

It is by no means a hard dish to make but the tedious preparation takes up the most time - not being able to buy minced chicken either was a bit of a bugger. I followed a recipe which just used chicken breast but decided to do a mixture of breast and thigh to intensify the flavour of the meat. 

So, after chopping up all the ingredients I was finally ready to start cooking!

Ingredients:

1 iceberg lettuce
3 chicken breasts (minced)
3 chicken thighs (skinned, boned and minced)
1 large onion (chopped)
4 cloves garlic (chopped)
4 chestnut mushrooms (chopped)
thumbsize piece of ginger (peeled and chopped)
1 tin water chestnuts (drained and chopped)
1 bunch spring onions (thinly sliced)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
3 tablespoons Sriracha chilli sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil

Preparation:

1) Rinse lettuce leaves, trying to keep them whole and set aside to drain. 

2) Add tablespoon of sunflower oil and cook the chicken in a large wok over medium heat, stirring often to break up the meat. Add onion, garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, fish sauce, ginger and chilli sauce. 

3) Cook until the meat is crumbled and brown. Add water chestnuts, mushrooms and green onions and cook until the onions begin to wilt, about 2 minutes and then stir in sesame oil. 

4) Spoon meat mixture into the centre of the lettuce leaf and eat like a taco.