Week 49 - 30 Minutes

If you've been reading cooking posts here for any length of time, you probably already know that I have speed issues with cooking. That's why I like when challenges like the Week 49 challenge, 30 minutes, come up, because I can challenge myself to get faster. They've done this challenge before, and back in 2016, I did finish the entire meal in 30 minutes, but it was largely done by using shortcuts (frozen roasted corn, protein was just pre-seasoned panko chicken tenders in the oven, etc). This time, I decided to pick a meal from scratch that was only supposed to take 30 minutes (including prep time) to see if I could do it.

I chose a teriyaki chicken stir-fry from Well Plated, which was supposed to be 15 minutes of prep time and 15 minutes of cooking. Since you can use whatever vegetables you want in a stir-fry, I thought there was a good chance it would take me longer than 30 minutes total even though I tried to pick some simpler vegetables, but I still wanted to give it a go.

The ingredients for the stir-fry were:

- 1/2 cup water ($0)

- 1/3 cup soy sauce ($0.50)

- about 3 tbsp honey ($0.69)

- about 1 tbsp rice vinegar ($0.10)

- big spoonful of minced garlic ($0.15)

- equivalent amount of ginger ($0.30)

- about 1 tbsp sesame oil ($0.30)

- big scoop of cornstarch ($0.25)

- 1 yellow onion ($0.61)

- 1 green pepper ($1.06)

- 1 red pepper ($1.56)

- small batch of scallions ($0.99)

- small bag of snap peas ($3.99)

- 1 package of extra firm tofu ($1.89)

- grapeseed oil for stir-frying ($0.10)

- 2 Bibigo microwavable sticky rice packets ($2.25)

The total cost for the dish was approximately $14.74, a little higher than I would have expected for this vegetarian dish, but almost a quarter of that was the snap peas alone.

Making the dish was relatively straightforward as we've made many stir-fries before. I often just stir-fry the protein and vegetables and then toss sauce ingredients on top of it in the wok, but since this one called for the teriyaki sauce to be made on the stove, I tried it that way instead. The water, soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, and sesame oil get mixed in a small pot on the stove, and then once boiling, a slurry of cornstarch and water is added to thicken it up. Unfortunately, when I threw the cornstarch slurry into the sauce, I didn't whisk it fast enough (I think I was doing multiple things at once), and when I got back to it, the sauce had formed giant gelatinous-like clumps. Oops. I was able to improve it and break some of that down a little bit, but even when the sauce was added to the wok, there were some jelly-like bits that we sometimes mistook for onions.

Anyway, the sauce was made in the pot, while the tofu and vegetables were cooked in the wok, and then the sauce was added at the end. The original plan had been to stir-fry the tofu, remove it from the wok, then cook the vegetables, and then add the tofu back in with the sauce, but there was something wrong with this tofu. I bought extra-firm on purpose so that it would be more likely to stay intact when sliced and stir-fried and not crumble like soft tofu, but this package of tofu crumbled more than any firm tofu we've used recently. The last package of 365 firm tofu that we made a week earlier was super firm, so I was looking forward to using the extra-firm and having it be even sturdier. Nope. It was significantly less firm and crumbled when I was slicing it. Just this batch? Mislabeled? Who knows, but it was like having scrambled tofu which was the exact opposite of what I was trying to do. We liked the dish overall and the sauce was good, but it would have been so much better with recognizable slices of tofu.

As far as the 30 minute challenge, how did it go? It took 58 minutes. At the 30 minute mark, there was still nothing in the wok, but I think I could have cut the time a little bit if not for a few things that slowed me down:

- The red pepper and green pepper we got from Whole Foods were a little old. The red pepper had some softer spots, and the green pepper had a gash in the side and a giant soft spot, so I had to chop them more carefully and slowly than I would have if they were in great condition.

- I wasn't expecting to have crumbly tofu sticking to the wok, which then couldn't be set aside for the vegetables, which also meant that the vegetables couldn't cook as quickly on their own in the wok.

- Breaking down the mountains of cornstarch in the sauce took a while, and if I had whisked it well enough from the start, that would have eliminated some time.

In the end, it was still under an hour, which was good for me, even for a straightforward stir-fry. We liked how it turned out, other than the tofu, but the tofu wasn't the fault of the recipe. (Seriously, how could that have been extra firm?) I would make this sauce for a stir-fry again.