This chicken stir fry is AMAZING – say hello to thin strips of chicken with caramelized red curry, served on steamy rice with broccoli and a big dollop of this garlicky, gingery, slightly spicy silky-smooth cashew sauce. It’s easy, it’s beautiful, it always has me going back for seconds (thirds).
In This Post: Everything You Need For Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Cashew Sauce
- Take Me to the Chicken Stir Fry Recipe
- Lindsay’s Notes
- Visual Walk-Through of the Recipe
- FAQs
- Reviews
Lindsay’s Notes
The way I love this recipe! Wow.
Red curry caramelized chicken stir fry, served with steamy rice and broccoli, and blanketed in a creamy, bright, super flavorful cashew sauce that makes this whole thing into a luscious, look-forward-to-it-all-day dinner dream.
We are in a phase in our family dinner life that calls for a lot of things: Bjork is eating a lot (A LOT) of protein right now, I like to try to get a lot of flavor into every meal (per usual), and the girls like to have some familiar, kid-friendly foods to choose from.
This has been our GO-TO for the last month or so! It hits what everybody wants.
Bjork gets his protein with lots of chicken, I get my flavor with all that sauce and curry-caramelization on the chicken, and the girls have steamy rice and broccoli to get excited about.
This was going to be the lead recipe for what will be our next run of the SOS series – yes, it’s coming! later this week – but I just couldn’t quite do it because of the sauce. That sauce has so much good flavor and I just couldn’t sacrifice anything to make the ingredient list shorter, so it doesn’t quite meet our SOS criteria. Which is fine. Here it is anyway, kind of SOS-y and kind of not, but delivering on that lick-every-drop-of-sauce feeling in such a big way.
How To Make Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry
Step 1: Make Your Cashew Sauce.
Gather up all your ingredients…
and blend them into a nice smooth sauce which looks about like this. It’s divine.
Step 2: Coat the Chicken Pieces with Cornstarch and Spices.
I like garlic powder, salt and pepper, plus the cornstarch to give it that golden brown exterior.
Step 3: Pan Fry the Chicken with Curry Paste and Brown Sugar.
Just like how you might make a normal curry, but rather than adding coconut milk, we are letting the chicken hold onto all that flavor. YES PLEASE!
Step 4: Serve with Broccoli, Rice, and Sauce.
Cut and cook it yourself, or go the steam-in-the-bag route. Doesn’t matter. Just get it all on the plate together.
AND THEN SAUCE THE HECK OUT OF IT.
This combination is so bright, satisfying, flavorful… just so incredibly good.
The cashew-sauce-on-stir-fry idea came from the Chloe Flavor cookbook (affiliate link), which is a very delicious vegan cookbook by Chloe Coscarelli!
Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Spicy Cashew Sauce
Total Time: 40 minutes
Yield: 4 servings 1x
Description
Caramelized red curry chicken sits next to a bed of hot, fluffy rice and steamed broccoli and then totally sauced up with the BEST spicy cashew sauce. Ooof, this is so, so good.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry:
- 1 lb. chicken breasts
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons avocado oil
- 2 tablespoons red curry paste
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
Spicy Cashew Sauce:
- 1 cup roasted salted cashews
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons sriracha
- 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 clove garlic
- juice of 2 limes
- 1 teaspoon ginger paste or fresh ginger
- pinch of salt
Veggies and Other:
- 2 cups small steamed broccoli florets (about 1 small head of broccoli or 1 frozen steam-in-the-bag)
- 2–3 cups cooked rice
Instructions
- Make the Spicy Cashew Sauce: Blend all ingredients in a high-powered blender until very smooth.
- Prep the Chicken: Cut the chicken breasts into very thin pieces. Toss with the cornstarch, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.
- Cook the Chicken: Add the avocado oil to a nonstick pan over medium high heat. Add the curry paste and brown sugar; cook for a few minutes to get it caramelizy and bubbly. Add the chicken. Toss once to coat in the sauce, then let it sit for several minutes to get the chicken nice and golden brown. Flip and repeat until chicken is cooked through. If needed, add 1-2 tablespoons of water to the pan to lift up any browned pieces that are stuck to the bottom.
- Serve: Serve the chicken on cooked rice, with cooked broccoli, with a lot of that yummy cashew sauce all over everything.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Sauté
- Cuisine: Asian-Inspired
Keywords: chicken stir fry, red curry chicken, stir fry
Frequently Asked Questions For Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry
I would make a peanut sauce equivalent! You can find my favorite peanut sauce here. And if you need a completely nut-free option, this lime drizzle is one of my favorites.
This will last for 3-5 days in the fridge! Goes well on SO many things! I have never loved eating steamed broccoli more than I did when I dipped it into this sauce.
This would be great with cauliflower or tofu! Chloe uses seitan and broccoli in the cookbook recipe that inspired this recipe.
This is naturally dairy-free! Hip hip!
First, make sure your curry paste is gluten-free. Secondly, use a tamari or coconut aminos instead of soy sauce in the cashew sauce.
Have your chicken cut up in advance, have your sauce made in advance, and use steam-in-the-bag broccoli plus steam-in-the-bag rice! Comes together in a snap.
