Lettuce Wraps

I've had several people ask for the recipe I use for the lettuce wrap sauce, and how to make lettuce wraps. Here is a good recipe for the sauce. I don't measure when I make it, I just throw things in, and keep tasting, but I know not everyone cooks that way, so here is the recipe that I started with.

2/3 C. rice vinegar
1 C. soy sauce
1 t. chili oil
A splash of lime juice (if you want it)
garlic powder to taste

Just mix it all together in a bowl, and refrigerate until you need it. Most recipes call for sesame oil, but I don't like it, so I don't use it. But you can add it if you want. Start really small with the chili oil, because it's pretty potent, and adjust it to how spicy you like it.

For the filling, I just make a stir fry, but I cut all the pieces into small little squares, kind of like frozen mixed vegetables, so it will work better in the lettuce wraps. I do chicken, carrots, lots of celery, zucchini, onion, sometimes broccoli, and water chestnuts, baby corn, and bamboo shoots if I remember to buy them before hand. I also make rice with the lettuce wraps, because we eat them as a meal, not an appetizer. I sometimes cook the vegetables and chicken with some of the sauce, but that ususally makes it too spicy for our kids, so I usually just cook it plain, and we season it at the table to our own tastes.

For the lettuce wraps, a really easy way to do it is to take the lettuce out of the wrapper, and whack it stem down on the counter. Then you can just pull the heart out, and carefully peal the leaves off.

Here's the finished product. After making the post last week, and having everyone ask me for the recipe, I started craving them, so we had them for dinner tonight! The recipe does take a long time. It took me about an hour to chop all the vegetables, and then another half hour to cook everything, but it was yummy! Even Liz ate it without a bit of complaining!