Veggie Stir Fry with the Best Sauce

There are thousands of stir fry recipes on the internet, each wonderful, each with different sauces and seasonings. A stir fry is a great way to use up the veggies you have in your fridge and let the flavours of your veggie combinations shine through! You can add a protein of tempeh, tofu or beans, and if not vegetarian or vegan, chicken, pork or beef. You can change it up each time by serving your stir-fry gloriousness over brown rice one time, rice noodles the next, quinoa another time! A stir fry is quick to make and best of all they are packed with great nutrition!

Presenting one of our favourite stir fry recipes. It’s vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free. It’s packed with vitamin and mineral-rich veggies. The water chestnuts give a satisfying crunch! The proteins in this recipe are the mixed beans and the peanut butter in the sauce. This sauce though – Mmmmm! The secret is the miso paste – it’s so good! If you like miso, you must try this recipe!

Miso is a fermented food that is great for gut health as it provides the gut with beneficial bacteria to help the gut function optimally and keep the gut happy. Miso is a good source of many of the B Vitamins, VitE, Vit K, folic acid and is rich in essential minerals our bodies need.

As always, when you make this recipe, please post a photo of your Veggie Stir Fry goodness and tag my IG account or leave a comment with your thoughts!

Prep Time: 15 minutes / Cook time: 40 minutes max / Serves: 4

Ingredients:

Sauce

• 2 Tablespoons White Miso Paste

• 3 Tablespoons Tamari (Alternate: Soy Sauce)

• 3 Tablespoons All-Natural Peanut Butter (Alternate: a nut butter of your choice)

• 2 Tablespoons Tahini

• 1 tsp Fresh Ginger - grated

• ½ Cup Water

Stir Fry

• 2 tsp Coconut Oil (Alternate: Sesame Oil or Grape Seed Oil)

• 1½ cup Cremini Mushrooms - sliced

• 1½ cups Broccoli – chopped into small florets

• 1 Medium Zucchini - sliced

• 1 540 ml / 19 fl. oz Can Mixed Beans

• 1/3 Cup Water

• 1 Cup Baby Spinach - packed

• 1 can 227ml / 8 fl. oz Sliced Water Chestnuts - drained

• Herbamare and Grinds of Fresh Pepper – to taste

• Cooked Brown Rice, Red Rice, Black Rice, Rice Noodles or Quinoa - to serve

How It’s Made

• Make the Sauce: Whisk together the miso, tamari, peanut butter, tahini, ginger and water. Set aside.

• In a large frying pan or wok, over medium-high, heat up the coconut oil. When hot, add the mushrooms and let them release their liquid. Add the broccoli and then add zucchini and cook until softened. These three veggies should take 10 minutes.

• Add the beans and stir. Give the sauce another quick whisk and add it to the pan. Lower to medium-low and allow the mixture to simmer gently. After about 10 minutes, or sooner if you need to, add the 1/3 cup water as the sauce will become thickened. Add the spinach and the water chestnuts and cook for another 2-5 minutes to let the spinach wilt and the chestnuts warm through.

• Give the sauce a taste and season with the Herbamare (or sea salt) and a few grinds of pepper to your taste. Herbamare is a seasoned salt, available at Costco, health food stores and many grocery stores. Go easy on the salt as the miso and the tamari both have enough salt to flavour this dish without a lot more needing to be added!

• Serve with red rice (as in the photos) or with brown or black rice, rice noodles or quinoa.

Enjoy!

Variations:

• Change up the veggies for what you have on hand. Keep them crisp and don’t cook them too long to let them get too mushy before adding the sauce.

• I use onions and garlic in so many of the dinners I cook that I purposefully left them out of this recipe. But please feel free to add them in if you wish – 1 medium onion chopped and 3 garlic cloves sliced and add them with the mushrooms.

• Sauté chicken or pork, add this sauce to simmer for 10 minutes and serve with veggies of choice or a salad on the side – another meal idea from one recipe!

• Serve the stir fry veggies and sauce over a roasted sweet potato. So good!