Serves: 4 • Prep Time: 30 minutes • Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 inch piece Ginger
- 2 cups Jasmine rice
- 2 pounds ground Chicken
- 2-3 heads Bibb lettuce
- 6 Scallions
- 6 cloves Garlic, minced
- 8 Dates
- 1/2 cup Mirin
- 1/2 cup gluten-free Soy Sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed Red Pepper Flakes
- 1 cup roasted, salted Cashews
- 1/4 ounce Cilantro
Instructions
- Carefully separate the lettuce leaves. Rinse in cool water until clean, then dry leaves between two clean towels.
- Pick cilantro leaves and roughly chop. Discard stems or feed them to a lucky lizard.
- Finely slice the scallions, keeping whites and light greens separate from dark greens.
- Roughly chop or crush the cashews.
- Pit and chop the dates.
- Use the side of a spoon to scrape the skin off of the ginger, then cut it into one-inch chunks.
- Combine rice, 3 cups of water, ginger chunks, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt in a medium pot and bring to a boil on high heat. Lower heat to medium low, cover, and simmer until all water has been absorbed, approximately 12 minutes. Remove pot from heat and leave covered until ready to serve.
- While rice is cooking, heat 1 tablespoon oil on medium high in a large pan. Add chicken, season with salt and pepper, and break up with a heat-safe spoon/spatula. Brown chicken until cooked through, then transfer to a bowl or plate.
- Add 2 tablespoons oil to the large pan from chicken over medium heat. When oil starts to shimmer, add crushed red pepper, cashews, garlic, and scallion whites and light greens. (If you’re adding bonus grated ginger, do that here.) Saute until golden, about two minutes. Add mirin, soy sauce, dates, and 2/3 cup water and raise heat to medium high. Stir for 5-10 minutes until sauce thickens.
- Return chicken to pan with sauce, over medium high heat, and stir to coat and warm, approximately 1-2 minutes.
- Remove the ginger chunks from the rice. Top the lettuce cups with ginger rice, chicken, cilantro and scallion dark greens.