Madhouse recipe : Chicken stir-fry

Christmas is a great time for eating (and over-eating !), with everything from mince pies and Christmas cake permanently on hand, as well as numerous boxes of biscuits and chocolates constantly doing the rounds. All that's without even mentioning the huge Christmas dinners on both side of the Channel ! Now we're back home and back to school, I'm trying to get us back into some healthy but kid-friendly eating routines. This chicken stir-fry was a quick and simple way to use up leftover roast chicken from the day before, with loads of veggies that the kids didn't even moan about eating because they were busy using chopsticks and they were easy to pick up - bonus ! I used whatever veg took my fancy in Aldi, so feel free to swap in other things, depending on what you have in the fridge !

 Chicken stir-fry

ingredients :

drizzle of olive oil

leftover roast chicken

1 onion

1 pack carrot sticks (or a couple of carrots)

1 pack baby sweetcorn

1 pack mange-tout

1 pack bean sprouts

1 pack noodles + seasonings

sweet soy sauce

This is what the meal started out as - all the leftover bits of chicken after our Sunday roast. There were a few bits of breast meat but mainly the legs and wings.

Start off by removing all the chicken from the bones and ripping it all into equal sized chunks or strips. I ended up with more meat than I first thought ! 

I had a pack of Thai flavour noodles in the cupboard that needed using up - along with a single serving pack of noodles, there were two sachets, one of thick soy sauce and one of green herbs. Boil up some water and let the noodles soak while you sort out the veggies.

This is quick to cook so sort out all your veggies before you start adding things to the pan - you need them all chopped into pieces about the same size.

Heat up the oil in a large pan or wok and fry the onion for a couple of minutes, then add the carrot and babycorn strips. Cook, stirring constantly.

Next, add the mange-tout. (I tried sugar snap peas this time, as they were on special offer, but the kids prefer the usual mange-tout.)

Then throw in the beansprouts, along with the chicken, and stir-fry for a few minutes until they have wilted and made some room in the pan.

Drain the noodles and add them to the pan. Looking in the fridge, I also found half a can of sweetcorn and the end of a pouch of Uncle Ben's rice, so they went in too. Give it all a good stir to stop it sticking.

Add a generous shake of sweetened soy sauce (or just regular soy sauce will do, if that's all you've got) and stir to combine all the flavours.

Add the sachets from the noodles (thick soy sauce and green seasoning that looks vaguely like dehydrated parsley but could be anything really !).

Heat through until the veggies are cooked but still nice and crisp, the chicken is perfectly warmed through and the sauce has oozed through everything. This is lovely with a final sprinkle of sesame seeds on top, but we'd run out !

This was a great way of using up leftover roast chicken and clearing out the veg compartment of the fridge, as well as using up a pack of instant noodles, so it's going on this month's #KitchenClearout linky.