This post is not at all festive—I’m writing it on the evening of December 23rd while listening to Christmas music. However, if you are about to eat piles of sugary treats like I am (my mom has stuffed her freezer with homemade cookies, brownies, tarts, dream squares, date squares…), you can balance some of that out with a quick vegetable stir fry tossed in this peanut sauce.
In fact, I came up with this peanut sauce simply as a vegetable delivery mechanism for my daughter C. It works! She really likes this recipe and has asked me to make rice noodles to go with it. That’s on the long to-blog list…
You can make this with peanuts or peanut butter. If I make it with peanuts, I use raw unsalted (and roast them at home). If I make it with peanut butter, I use peanut butter I’ve ground up at the store (it contains only unsalted peanuts). Use about half the volume of peanut butter as you would peanuts (the nuts reduce that much when you transform them into nut butter).
I wouldn’t use something like Jif peanut butter in this. It’s processed, packaged in plastic and check out the ingredients: “Made From Roasted Peanuts And Sugar, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Molasses, Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed And Soybean), Mono And Diglycerides, Salt.”
Peanut Sauce
Yields 1 cup
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanuts or a scant 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled
- 1 large clove garlic, peeled
- Juice of 1 lime
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons vinegary but still somewhat sweet kombucha (or rice wine vinegar)
- 1 teaspoon honey, molasses or sugar (or to taste)
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Directions
1. If using peanuts rather than peanut butter, place them in a food processor and pulse until you render peanut butter. Add remaining ingredients and continue to pulse until smooth.
2. If the sauce is too thick, thin out with water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
3. Add to stir fried vegetables, noodles or use as a dip.
4. This recipe is extremely easy to veganize. Use the molasses or sugar instead of honey.