Peanut Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Flavorful, easy, filling yet light, peanut chicken lettuce wraps are THE dinner of summer ’21! Most of the recipe is prep work—chopping your vegetables and making the peanut sauce. Luckily, these can be done ahead of time, so when you’re ready for dinner, you just need to cook the chicken and assemble. In a far-off world where I don’t drown each wrap in sauce, these might even be healthy-ish.

Let’s be honest: The peanut sauce is the star of the show…at least my show, as evidenced with these Shiitake Peanut Noodles, this Chicken Satay with Coconut-Peanut Sauce, these Spicy Sesame-Peanut Noodles with Zucchini and Crispy Tofu, this Thai Peanut Acorn Squash, and these Vegan Spicy Peanut Tofu Lettuce Wraps. All winners!

But back to this recipe and the peanut sauce here. This recipe comes from Damn Delicious, the queen of flavorful weeknight dinners. I increased the sauce because more is more and added my favorite lettuce wrap accompaniments. The sauce comes together with only six ingredients, most of which you probably have on hand. Plus, extra peanut sauce is always a good thing—you can use it to marinate chicken to grill, as a dipping sauce for veggies, and as a salad dressing when thinned out with a little water or rice wine vinegar.

The lettuce wrap recipe uses many pantry staples if you have a well-stocked Asian pantry (which I hope you do because you can make endless recipes from these ingredients!). Soy sauce! Peanut butter! Hoisin sauce! Chili-garlic sauce! Fish sauce! Sesame oil! All ingredients that last for a very long time and can make combinations from Chinese to Thai to Vietnamese kitchens.I chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and cook in a skillet, but you could use ground chicken or grill the breasts whole for some smoky, charred flavor, chop the chicken, and mix with some peanut sauce in a skillet. I like to apply a little heat to the peanut sauce and chicken—it changes the flavor and texture slightly, concentrating the peanutiness and thickening the sauce to coat the chicken. It’s nice to have two textures to the sauce—the thick, concentrated flavor when mixed with the chicken and the drizzleable peanut sauce for serving.

I serve these lettuce wraps with lots of fresh chopped veggies, like carrots, bell peppers, green onions, and cilantro. The crunch of fresh veggies is a welcome foil to the saucy, rich chicken. Chopped peanuts add crunch and reinforce the peanut flavor. Put all the fixings on a big platter and let people assemble their lettuce wraps however they like. Just be sure to serve with plenty of peanut sauce for dipping and drizzling!

[tasty-recipe id=”41240″]