PF Chang Lettuce Wraps

While I am not the biggest PF Chang’s fan, Dawn and I do like the lettuce wraps. We often find ourselves sitting with friends and family at an oversized table enjoying a family style dinner. The highlight for us is always the lettuce wraps, so I wanted to give them a whirl. I found 2 recipes online that sounded good. Neither one seemed to be quite right, so I split the difference and mixed and matched as I felt was best, or as my lack of ingredients dictated. As both Dawn and I agreed that the wraps turned out excellent, I’ll try to recreate what I put together.

Before we get into the wraps themselves, we have to make the “special sauce” to pour over the wraps when we’re done. Here are the ingredients you’ll need:

- 1/8 Cup Sugar
- ¼ Cup Water
- 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
- 1 Tbsp Ketchup
- 2 tsp Lime Juice
- 2 tsp Oil
- 2 tsp Dijon Mustard
- Less than 1 tsp Red Chili Powder
- 2 Tbsp Asian Sweet Chili Sauce

These measurements made enough for Dawn and I; if you intend to have more people you will need to increase the recipe. There is nothing special to this sauce, mix it all together, then stick in the refrigerator while you make the rest. I was pretty nervous about it because it smelled a little interesting, but the taste was actually quite good.

We made both a meat and vegetarian version of the wraps, just like PF Chang’s offers. Here are the ingredients you’ll need:

- 2Tbsp Oil
- 2 Boneless Chicken Breasts (or some vegetarian Chicken, we did 1 part meat, 1 part vege)
- 1 can Water Chestnuts
- 2-3 Shitake Mushrooms
- ¼ Onion
- 1 Garlic Clove
- 1 Cup Chopped Roasted Cashews
- Butter Lettuce (we got Boston)
- 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
- ½ tsp White Wine Vinegar

Directions:

Mince the chicken and set aside. Mince the Water Chestnuts, Mushrooms, cashews, Onion and Garlic. Place the chestnuts, mushrooms, onion, cashews, and garlic in a frying pan. Add the oil, soy sauce, brown sugar and vinegar and sauté for a minute or 2. Add the chicken and continue to sauté until the chicken is fully cooked. When everything has been fully cooked, scoop into a lettuce leaf, top with the “special sauce” and serve.

Here is the meat version.

Here is the vegetarian version:

This blog posted while listening to Boston.