Meow Recipes

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Thai Peanut Chicken Bowls

Peanut chicken in a bowl with vermicelli noodles and cucumber salad.

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Watch How To Make These Peanut Chicken Bowls

The Meal I Didn’t Know I Needed.

Well, that was tasty.

What you’re looking at is a a bowl of caramelized peanut chicken, on a tangled bed of vermicelli noodles, with some herbs and cucumber salad, topped with more of that peanut sauce.

After what has felt like a kind of long rut of post-holiday life / overwhelm / meh cooking, my first bite of this just woke me up inside. It revived me in just the right way.

Second of all, and related – have you seen the Trader Joe’s Peanut Satay Sauce? It’s your ticket to making this stupidly easy. It’s delicious, thick, creamy, and mild enough for 4 out of 4 of our little Scandinavian family to love it. You should buy a jar and make this.

Jar of Trader Joe's Thai Peanut Satay Sauce.

If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s nearby, try this peanut sauce instead! I use it in a similar way with tofu and I think it would be absolutely perfect here. The sesame oil in there is chef’s kiss delicious.

And no surprise, I’m still loving and using these PFAS-free nonstick pans, and they work really well in this recipe.

January is not really anyone’s favorite (is it anyone’s favorite)? but you know what? We have noodles. We have caramelized bites of chicken. We have fresh mint, little jars of sauce, and flavor joy.

Let’s have a big bowl of noodles / chicken / peanut sauce / salad and remember that we’re going to be okay.

Thai Peanut Chicken Bowls

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Author: Lindsay
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 3-4 servings

Description

I love a shortcut dinner hack! These bowls feature caramelized peanut chicken, a tangle of vermicelli noodles, fresh herbs and cucumber salad, and peanut sauce all over top.

Ingredients

Units

Chicken

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs, cut into thin slices
8-ounce jar Thai peanut satay sauce (from Trader Joe’s)
1 clove grated garlic

Cucumber Salad

2 cups thinly sliced cucumber (1 large English cucumber)
1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion (about 1/4 an onion)
2 tablespoons avocado oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
salt and sugar to taste

Noodles and Toppers

4 ounces vermicelli noodles
a few tablespoons of crushed peanuts
a few sprigs of herbs – I like mint, cilantro, and basil because I’m an herb hog!

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Instructions

Marinate the Chicken: Marinate the chicken with half the jar of sauce and the garlic for about 30 minutes to an hour.
Cucumber Salad: Meanwhile, toss the cucumbers, onions, oil, vinegar, salt and sugar together.
Cook the Chicken: Heat a small amount of oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat; add chicken, let it sit undisturbed for a few minutes to caramelize, then flip and repeat until the chicken is cooked through and golden brown. To caramelize it further, you can add a pinch of sugar towards the end.
Make a Bowl: Serve the chicken over rice noodles, with some of the cucumber salad, fresh herbs, and peanuts.
Sauce: Using your remaining sauce, add a bit of water, soy sauce, or chili oil to the jar to thin it out into more of a dressing. Drizzle over the bowls and dive into that.

Notes

If you don’t have access to a Trader Joe’s to buy the peanut satay sauce, try this peanut sauce instead! Use about 1/3 cup to marinate the chicken in step 1, and then 1/3 cup to dilute into the dressing in step 5!

Prep Time: 30
Cook Time: 15
Category: Dinner
Method: Stovetop
Cuisine: Thai

Keywords: satay sauce, thai peanut sauce, peanut sauce, peanut noodles, chicken

Three More Trader Joe’s Shortcut Meals

Sun-Dried Tomato Turkey Sandwich

Scallion Pancakes with Eggs

Chicken Wontons in Spicy Chili Sauce

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Tuesday, January 7, 2025

My Favorite Non-Alcoholic Beers

Some of the links featured in this post are affiliate links to products I enjoy and recommend – which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase!

On Drinking, and Its Place In My Life.

(But it actually starts with my husband.)

Five years ago, my husband Bjork decided he was going to stop drinking alcohol pretty much on the spot.

At a holiday dinner with friends in 2018, he leaned over to me and whispered, “I think I’m going to stop drinking for a year.” It was a total shock to me, but it also made sense; he was thinking about his health, his nightly routines, and our daughter, who was one year old at the time.

I had my doubts, but his on-the-spot decision at a restaurant in 2018 did, in fact, turn into a year of no drinking.

And a year turned into two years, and two years turned into five years.

I have never made any sort of grand declarations about my drinking in the same way he did, and I tend to be less of a black-and-white decision maker (there’s room for all types!). But an unintended consequence, or maybe benefit, of Bjork not drinking for the last five years is that I’ve also started drinking less, too.

These days I will drink socially, maybe one or two drinks per month when I’m going out to dinner with friends. But the biggest change for us with Bjork’s decision is that we no longer keep alcohol in our home. And honestly, this change has felt great for our family.

The hardest part with this decision is that I miss having something that can mark a moment as special. A nice dinner is one thing, but drinks? Drinks are a little extra, a little frivolous, and make it feel like it’s the real thing – whether for a birthday, a holiday, or even just celebrating being together on a Tuesday evening after work.

You probably see where this is going – it seems obvious, but what I’ve learned is that the drinks don’t have to have alcohol to create a special moment. Lucky for all of us who are looking to drink less, we live in a time when non-alcoholic (NA) drinks are becoming more popular and more… how do I say this? Good. Like, good-tasting. There are so many options out there that are genuinely exciting and create that same “this is special” moment that you’d get from a cocktail or a glass of wine.

So with a deep love for special moments and five years of NA beer tasting experience under our belts, here’s a list of the NA beers that we love best.

I poured them all out so you can see the color and clarity a bit better, and photographed them all in my good old scratched-up IKEA beer glass and we can feel like we’re tasting together. Enjoy!

7 Favorite Non-Alcoholic Beers

1 Sam Adams Just The Haze IPA

This is currently my favorite. I’ve never been huge on actual IPAs but this one is just it for me. Really juicy, really hazy, and really nice. Buy it here.

2 Best Day Brewing Kolsch

This kolsch-style beer is light, malty, and we love it! It’s generally considered to be one of the best NA beers on the market right now. Buy it here.

3 Athletic Brewing Upside Dawn Golden

We love Athletic Brewing and they have a ton of beers and non-alcoholic drinks that are just really great all around. A current fave is this light, refreshing Upside Dawn (but, honestly, love all their products and have tried many). Buy it here.

4 Clausthaler Original

A house favorite for years! You can buy it at Trader Joe’s. The flavor is just nice and easy to drink, with “a creamy feel on the palate”. The dry-hopped IPA is also nice when you want something a little meatier. Buy it here.

5 Heineken 0.0

Fruity notes, soft malty body. Or, in my own words, light and mellow and crispy. Whatever it is, it’s delicious. We buy this on the reg! Buy it here.

6 Corona Non-Alcoholic

This guy drinks like a beachy Corona, but without the alcohol. Well done, Corona! Buy it here.

7 Guinness 0 Non-Alcoholic Draught

This is, as expected, rich and dark, mellow and creamy, with a velvety finish. Bjork says it’s one of his faves! Buy it here.

8 Bonus: Ghia!

We are now a family whose fridge is loaded with Ghia as often as possible. My favorite is the Ghia Ginger (tiny little can of spicy soda), mixed with a little rosemary syrup and sparkling water! OOOH BABY. What I like about all their products is that they’re complex and nuanced, containing lots of flavors like smokiness, saltiness, bitterness, and heat – so much more than just a sweet drink. Plus, for any design geeks in your life, the packaging is so beautiful. Buy it here.

More Of My Favorite Things

Favorite Trader Joe’s Products

Favorite ALDI Products

Small table full of different food dishes.

Favorite Twin Cities Restaurants

The post My Favorite Non-Alcoholic Beers appeared first on Pinch of Yum.

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Thursday, December 19, 2024

Gingery Cranberry Salsa

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Watch How To Make This Cranberry Salsa

Cranberry Salsa, You Are My New Favorite Holiday App.

My friend Amanda has a gorgeous recipe for a cranberry-salsa-topped dip with cream cheese. I’ve had my eye on it for years, and this was the year I finally tried it. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

It is finely textured, juicy, zippy, fresh and sweet with a little bit of fire from the jalapeño.

There are plenty of cranberry salsa or cranberry relish-type recipes out there, but the best thing she does that’s different from other recipes is that she adds a knob of fresh ginger. Hello! So good.

I brought her dip on the platter, with the creamy base, to a holiday party in our neighborhood and it was delicious. Beautiful. So wonderful. But when we came back home, both Bjork and I went straight to the fridge for just the extra cranberry salsa – eating it plain, nothing else with it, just dipping chips straight into it like hungry little wolves.

The really fun part is that over the next few days, I found myself using that cranberry salsa on EVERYTHING – a dollop on a turkey wrap with spinach and mayo. A shmear of it on toast. A spoonful of it into my chicken and rice bowl.

So, here’s the recipe for the salsa, as I made it – I made only a few slight changes to Amanda’s recipe, most significantly, using garlic instead of green onions (just what we prefer in this house), throwing some bonus parsley in there, and adding a decent amount of pistachios for some extra body and a buttery crunch.

You can eat it fresh, for sure, but don’t skip the rest time in the fridge for some Day 2 action. It gets a little less aggressively tart and a lot more juicy.

I’ve already made it twice in the last week. Cheers to last-minute holiday recipes for people like me!

Welcome To My House! Let’s Make Cranberry Salsa!

1 Chop up the cranberries.

This is most ideal in a food processor! I use this one. (Affiliate link)

2 Chop Your Aromatic Yummy Stuff.

Again, the food processor coming in clutch!

3 You’re Done! Yum!

Toss everything up and give it a 12-24 hour rest, if you can! SO AMAZING with chips or crackers with goat cheese.

Crostini dipping up cream cheese and cranberry salsa.