Jaclyn’s Pick

Recipe: Copycat P.F. Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Fare: Asian
Prep Time: 35 minutes

Greetings, eaters and readers!

The pressure was on to pick our first-ever “let’s cook in lieu of eating out during the pandemic” adventure. I had absolutely no clue what to pick, but thought I should start by easing us in with a restaurant copycat recipe. After a quick Google search, I landed on one of my favorite P.F. Chang’s appetizers.

We invite you to watch highlights of our cooking and eating experience below and please – try not to be overwhelmed by our Oscar-winning performances. Following that, you’ll find a handful of thoughts, the recipe, and our fork rating.

Below are pictures of the ingredients we used. Of the things we didn’t already on hand, we spent about $11 total to buy chicken, green onions, ginger root, yellow onion, butter lettuce, and water chestnuts.

COPYCAT P.F. CHANG’S LETTUCE WRAPS
Source: Damn Delicious

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 pound ground chicken
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon Sriracha, optional
• 1 (8-ounce) can whole water chestnuts, drained and diced
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1 head butter lettuce

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium high heat. Add ground chicken and cook until browned, about 3-5 minutes, making sure to crumble the chicken as it cooks; drain excess fat.
2. Stir in garlic, onion, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ginger and Sriracha until onions have become translucent, about 1-2 minutes.
3. Stir in chestnuts and green onions until tender, about 1-2 minutes; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
4. To serve, spoon several tablespoons of the chicken mixture into the center of a lettuce leaf, taco-style.

Final Bite

For our first attempt at an at-home copycat recipe, we were quite happy with how our lettuce wraps turned out. If you give these a whirl yourself, we recommend trusting the list and quantity of ingredients. At one point, it looks very water chestnut and ‘everything else’ heavy – but in the end, it’s all balanced the way it should be. The taste was nearly exactly what we loved about dining at P.F. Chang’s. Almost as an after thought, we quickly Googled how to make the sauce that usually accompanies the wraps in restaurants. Comprised of things we already had on hand, it made all the difference. A quick swirl of sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar and chili paste – we decided that the sauce was something we could make and use with numerous other asian dishes or appetizers.