Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil

For my birthday a couple years ago my workmates gave me some cookbooks, one of which was a book about step-by-step Thai cooking. At the time I wasn't really all that into Thai flavours, but I pulled this book out after I had taken the Thai cooking class. The book is packed with amazing looking recipes and I can't wait to try so many of them.

This particular recipe came from a two page spread about Quick Stir-fries. I love a good chicken and basil stir-fry and there's a place in Brisbane called Star Chow that makes an amazing version. It's out of this world good. The cookbook had two recipes on this spread that included chicken and basil. One also had corn as an ingredient, but DD doesn't like corn so I looked to the other one, which was the Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil.

It's really easy, so very very easy. It's almost as good as Star Chow, which means it is very very good. The taste almost explosive in that every bite is full of the most amazing combination of flavours. The first time I made it, I found DD in the kitchen scraping up the bits of chicken and peanuts left in the pan because he loved the taste. It was so good that I had to tell my mother about it and insist she try it. She did try it and, like a good food blogger's mum, she even took a photo of it for me.


Mum also really enjoyed it. She added more vegetables to her version and she says that the basil really lifted and lightened the dish.

Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil
adapted from Thai Cookbook Step by Step

4 chicken breast fillets
1 tbs Thai green curry paste (there is a recipe in the book for the curry paste, but I used a good quality commercial version)
125g trimmed snow peas
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar
80g chopped roasted peanuts
30g fresh basil leaves

Slice the chicken into small thin pieces. Combine with the curry paste and mix well. Combine the fish sauce and brown sugar together in a small bowl or cup and mix well.

Heat 1 tbs oil in a wok or frying pan. Add the chicken in 2 batches and stir-fry each batch for 3 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Transfer to a plate.

Add the snow peas to the wok and toss. Cover with a lid and steam for one minutes. Return the chicken to the wok and add the fish sauce and brown sugar mix and the peanuts and basil leaves. Toss gently and serve with steamed rice.