Dukan Spicy Chicken Stir 'Fry' Recipe

On the Stabilization phase of the Dukan diet, you can eat the approved meats and vegetables everyday. After the alternating Cruise phase, it is the good life!

One of my most favourite dishes is a spicy stir fry. The best part is you can make something this tasty and it still be healthy, sugar-free, gluten-free and Dukan friendly!

What You'll Need (for two people):

• Two chicken breasts
• One sweet red pepper (or, zoete rood paprika...I am learning Dutch!)
• Whatever Dukan vegetables you think are delicious when spiced-up and hot (I like anything like leeks, bean sprouts, carrots, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, onion...anything I have in the fridge that doesn't go soggy when cooked)
• For this recipe I usually super cheat and get a bag of pre-cut veggies (Martha would not approve but it saves me loads of time chopping when I have had a busy day and don't have much time to cook)
• Ingredients for my Dukan spicy marinade
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cucumber (or komkommer;) to use as a garnish

What You'll Do:
Its all about timing with a stir fry, you don't want your veggies overcooked as you are still waiting for your chicken to cook. This is how I do it:

• Make your Dukan spicy marinade
• Prep your veggies, cut them all to a nice, chewable sizes
• Dice your onion. I was taught a trick from my friend Keith years ago on how to dice an onion easily. I have tried to show you in this picture, but, basically cut the onion in strips in one direction, then rotate around and slice in strips, so you have a hatched pattern. Then, when you slice your onion, all of your pieces will be perfect little squares. I love this trick!

• Get your wok (or large, non-stick frying pan) out and sprinkle your diced onions into it
• Cover your onions in water, not all the way, but just enough so they have enough to gently boil in. This is called water sauteing.  This technique is a very helpful trick on the Dukan diet. We are used to sauteing onions in butter or oils, but with water you get none of the fat and all of the taste! To be honest, heck yeah I miss the taste of butter sauteed onions...but my butt doesn't!

• Now, prep your chicken
• Wash the breasts (that made me feel dirty typing that) in cool water
• Pat dry with paper towel. I have zero idea why you do this but it was something my Mom told me to do and I have done it ever since. So, you have now been told. Choose your choice
• Cut off any remaining skin or weird, wiggly bits
• Chop into similar-sized pieces
• Heat up your non-stick medium sized frying pan
• Once hot, toss in your chicken pieces
• I like to season them with a little freshly ground pepper (so Martha of me)
• Brown them on each side
• Pour the Dukan spicy marinade over top 
• Toss the chicken to ensure each piece is covered in sauce
• In your wok, put in any vegetable that takes longer to cook - for example, this is a great time to put in your broccoli or cauliflower
• Keep stirring your saucy chicken for another few minutes
• Add in the rest of the vegetables into your wok
• Pour in 1/4 (or less) water into the wok and stir
• Once your chicken is done (you can tell as the sauce will be nice and sticky like shown below), pour it over top of your vegetables

• Stir
• I find you don't need any extra sauce for your vegetables if you stir in your chicken - it is the perfect sauce, veggie, meat ratio

• To serve, I use a slotted spoon to drain off any excess liquid, then once in the serving bowl, I sprinkle my chopped cucumber on top. You don't want to cook these as hot cucumbers are super gross. Trust me.

That's it. A stir-without-the-fry.
No oil, gluten-free, sugar-free, and Dukan friendly.
Plus it's easy, tasty, healthy and filling. You don't need rice or anything.


The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 2
Taste: 2
Ease: 2 (maybe a little less easy if you choose to chop all your veggies...you keener;)

My Favourite Dukan Friendly Marinade

You eat a lot of meat on the Dukan diet. For someone who is neither here nor there about meat and can easily go without it, eating it all the time has been a bit of a challenge.
To spice things up, literally, here is a wonderful meat marinade you can use on chicken, lean beef, turkey breast, or on your vegetables in a stir fry.

What You'll Need:

• 3 Tbsp low-sodium, gluten-free soy sauce
• 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp powdered sweetener, I use Ideal. You can also use a brown-sugar sweetener, if you can find it...the Netherlands does not seem to have it
• 1/2 clove of crushed garlic (this is optional)
• 1 tsp chili paste, I use the Conimex Sambal Oelek kind because there aren't many crazy, non-natural ingredients used, and its readily available at the neighbourhood Albert Heijn

What You'll Do:
Because this is a marinade, you can mix all the ingredients together and let your meat of choice sit in it, covered in plastic wrap, to soak, refrigerated in the flavour for a few hours, or, what I like to do if I am making poultry is this:

• Dice raw poulrty into equal-sized pieces (if you put your meat in the freezer for 45 minutes beforehand, it makes it a lot easier to cut!)
• Brown the meat on both sides in a non-stick frying pan
• Pour in the fully mixed marinade into the non-stick frying pan with the browned meat
• Let simmer until the meat is fully cooked and the marinade has almost all been soaked up 
• Voila! 

This makes perfect stir-fry meat to add into your Dukan-approved vegetables.

You can also use this marinade as the sauce for your vegetables - by pouring over top and allowing the vegetables to soak up the flavour. If I use it as a vegetable sauce, I will add a little water, maybe 1/3 cup so the vegetables have something to cook down inside.

You can also eliminate the garlic if it plays tricks on you, and just stick with the chili paste.

STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1 (Its brown and chunky...hardly magazine spread worthy)
Taste: 2
Ease: 2