Shrimp Stir Fry

I usually feel much more comfortable following a recipe that I know has been tested and deemed satisfactory by someone with much more culinary experience than myself than I do creating my own recipe.  And to be perfectly honest, at 5:00 when I'm hungry and tired, my creative juices aren't usually flowing and I don't want to even think about coming up with my own dinner creation.  I have my favorite websites that I like to pull recipes from and I trust them to be reliable.  I tell you all of that to let you know that I broke out of my recipe habit and I actually did come up with my very own shrimp stir fry recipe recently - and everyone liked it!

A trip to Trader Joe's was all it took to give me the inspiration for this dish.  Great looking produce and a bag of frozen shrimp screamed shrimp stir fry to me.  I had intended to bring my ingredients home and look up a recipe for stir fry but a quick search of the internet proved useless.  I like to load my stir fry up with vegetables and keep my sauce simple.  After several minutes of searching, I realized that I was not going to find what I needed to I decided to venture out on my own.  (Scary territory for me.)

I pulled the hoisin sauce from my general tso's chicken out of the refrigerator, and my sauce idea was born.  A little hoisin, a little soy, some sherry for flavor and some cornstarch to thicken.

Here is the key to putting together a great stir fry in a short amount of time --- prep everything ahead of time!

I'm not kidding.  Having all of the ingredients prepped and ready will save you tons of time and lots of headaches when you're ready to make your stir fry.

Shrimp Stir Fry

• 2 tablespoons canola oil, divided
• 1 pound raw shrimp, (21-25 per pound), peeled and deveined
• 3 cups snow peas, trimmed
• 8 ounces baby bella mushrooms, stemmed, sliced
• 1 cup fresh broccoli florets
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 1/4 cup dry sherry
• 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 cups brown rice, cooked

I like to use brown rice in my stir fry so I cook that first because it takes about 45 minutes to cook.

 
Heat 1 Tablespoon of oil in skillet.  Add shrimp and cook until slightly pink.

Remove shrimp from skillet and keep warm in a separate bowl.












Heat remaining oil in skillet and add vegetables and ginger. Cook until crisp tender.

Combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch and sherry.  (Not pictured in order.)

Add partially cooked shrimp and sauce to skillet.

Cook until sauce thickens and shrimp is cooked through.  (Check out that steam!)

I served my stir fry with brown rice and pineapple slices.  Yum.

I'm feeling quite confident in my recipe creation skills right now.  Maybe that Amy Davis cookbook isn't so far away after all.

 Ciao!