Spicy Chicken Stir-Fry - Low Carb

This evening I made Spicy Chicken Stir-Fry for dinner since it was just my youngest son that came to eat with us (he loves chicken and is not a beef eater at all). It was very similar to the stir-fry I made last Sunday but tonight's stir-fry was exceptionally good. Besides adding red bell peppers to the broccoli and carrots that were in last Sunday's meal, what made tonight's unusually good was that I marinated the chicken for several hours beforehand. Before I went low carb and grain free a couple of years ago, I used to marinate my stir-fry chicken in soy sauce, cornstarch, garlic, and a little hoisin sauce. It would make the chicken as tender as butter after stir-frying and extremely flavorful.

Today, I tried to recreate that tenderness and it came so close that I can't tell the difference between this and my old version. I sliced about 1-1/4 pounds of chicken cutlets into 1/4-inch wide strips. I added it to a bowl along with 1 very large minced clove of garlic (it was the equivalent of 2 regular cloves), 2 to 3 teaspoons apple cider vinegar, and a couple teaspoons of chili garlic sauce and mixed it all together. Chili garlic sauce can be found in the Asian food section of most grocery stores. The marinade is barely enough to coat the meat, and not liquidy like traditional marinade that surrounds the meat. You do NOT want your chicken to be wet when adding it to your hot wok with oil. I covered and refrigerated the chicken and marinated it about 3 hours. The flavors permeated the meat and the acidity from the chili garlic sauce and bit of vinegar tenderized the meat. It did not make the chicken overly spicy at all. As a matter of fact, I stirred a bit more chili garlic sauce into the chicken after stir-frying it and tasting it for heat. If you have the time to marinate your chicken before stir-frying, it makes a big difference in the flavor and tenderness. Everything else was the same as last Sunday's stir-fry which can be found here: Chicken Broccoli Stir-Fry. I snapped a few photos for you to see below. Enjoy!