Anything goes with this vegetable variety pack! Assemble a mixture of colours and textures to make vegetables exciting again. Served with an argument in favour of cooking chicken sous vide from frozen, not thawed.

Time: 4/5
Takes time to sous vide chicken, but that’s mostly passive time.

Effort: 3/5
Knife work and stirring things in a pan, with a brief interlude to sear some protein.

Vegetal Variety Pack

Always eat your veggies! And doing that is easier when your vegetables look exciting as well as taste good. One way to do that is to include a variety of colours and textures, like my interpretation of Yasai Itame.

Yasai Itame is a Japanese term that means “stir fry vegetables” – it’s exactly what it says on the tin. Recipes like these are flexible and readily adaptable, so feel free to throw in any vegetables you have lying around.

There are some similarities across the various recipes which lend substance to the spirit of Yasai Itame, however. Cabbage features heavily, as does carrots and bean sprouts. Alliums like onion and garlic also make it on the ingredient list often, and it’s also common to see bell peppers or green beans in the mix. Some (like Nami’s version on Just One Cookbook) make it a complete meal by adding some protein.

However, I’m not technically stir-frying my vegetable mix, because that’s hard to do properly without an industrial-tier jet engine stove unless you do so in small quantities and split your dish up into small batches. All I’m doing is trying to cook a lot of vegetables at the same time, and have the results taste decent enough to not ruin my day.

To make it a meal, I’m serving this Japanese style vegetable stir fry with rice and some sous vide chicken breasts. Sous vide has already changed my meal prepping life by being a hands-off and foolproof way to cook a lot of lean protein at the same time.

It’s also handy for ingredient prep too – for those who don’t like meals that have been sitting around for a few days, you could have a bunch of chicken sitting in the fridge, ready for a quick sear before a weeknight dinner.

Up till now, I’ve always defrosted my chicken before the sous vide. This time I tried cooking them straight from the freezer and let me tell you, I’m never going back to handling floppy, raw thawed chicken ever again! Frozen breasts are so much easier to handle, and they don’t splash raw chicken juice everywhere. 10/10 big brain move, give it a try soon.

But hey, I’ve said enough about chicken, that’s old news on this blog. It’s this Japanese inspired vegetable stir fry that is the new and interesting kid on the block.

Dramatis Personae

Served 10.

Carrots – two, large-ish, about 600g

Peeled and cut into batons. You could shred them with a box grater or julienne them for a nicer presentation. You’d be much more patient than I to put so much effort into a meal prep vegetable side dish. I might do it if I was cooking for someone else, but today all I want is a reasonably tasty meal with as little effort as possible that keeps my poops regular.

Onion – one medium

Slice into sections or half-moons. Adds sweetness and aroma. You could save these towards the end and add them with the bean sprouts to preserve some crunch, but then you’d run the risk of them remaining raw, pungent and (in my opinion) nasty.

Garlic – a couple cloves

Smashed and peeled. I don’t bother breaking them down further in a dish like this, since I just want the garlic aroma to hang around in the background. Besides, leaving the cloves whole prevents little bitty piees of garlic burning onto the bottom and creating acrid, bitter flavours.

Cabbage – one head, about 600g

One of the top contenders for an S-tier vegetable for meal prep, if I ever make a tier list about that. All you need to do is rinse, quarter, core and shred. If you’re worried about pesticide residue you can just peel off the outermost layers.

It’s nice and dense too, so you get a lot of meals’ worth of fiber from a single thing instead of buying huge bags of vegetables to have it shrink down to nothing (I’m looking at you, spinach).

Bean sprouts – 600g

The sprouts of mung beans, grown in a dark environment. I can just buy them wherever but you can probably find some in an Asian market. They have a mild taste and a pleasant, juicy crunch to them. A nice way to add some contrasting texture to a dish.

Seasonings

About two tablespoons each of oyster sauce, soy sauce and white pepper. White pepper and cabbage is a combo that stands well on its own already, but really shines when it acts as a base for something more complex like this vegetable stir fry. There’s something about the earthiness and spiciness of white pepper that I really like with the sweet and crunchy cabbage, and I find myself going back to this combination again and again.

Boneless skinless chicken breast – 10 pieces, 2kg total.

I gave mine 7g of salt per 1kg, and divided them into two bags to season differently. One got a pretty conventional black pepper and mixed dried herbs treatment, while the other got a tablespoon or so each of white pepper (since I already had it out) and sand ginger.

You may know sand ginger as Thai ginger or aromatic ginger. While it’s called ginger it’s much less spicy, more earthy and much more savoury than normal ginger. It’s an excellent pairing with chicken – try roasting a whole chicken after rubbing it all around with a paste of sand ginger, salt and scallion oil!

The chicken is going to take the longest to cook, but you can actually do this step way ahead of time and refrigerate the breasts until you are ready to coko the vegetables. Of course, you can swap the breasts out for any other protein you want like Miso Honey Salmon, Three Cup Chicken, or a Pork and Edamame Stir Fry.

Executive summary

1. Place chicken and seasonings into a heat-safe zipper bag. Sous vide at 60C/140F for 3 hours. You may do this ahead of time and refrigerate chicken until ready to cook.
2. Wash and cut vegetables. Pat chicken dry with paper towels.
3. In a large skillet or wok, sear chicken in a bit of vegetable oil and reserve.
4. In the same pan, add carrots, onions and garlic. Stir fry until slightly wilted.
5. Add shredded cabbage, and stir fry until wilted.
6. Add bean sprouts and seasoning for vegetables, stir to combine.
7. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. Chicken breasts salted, seasoned and bagged for the sous vide. it’s suprising how much easier it is to handle meat when it’s still frozen!

Into the water bath, with a plate on top to keep everything submerged. I’ll just leave this here for the next two hours or so.

I set up the rice cooker about an hour before dinner, and went on to wash and cut the vegetables. There’s a lot here, and I may need to work in batches. Let’s see how it goes.

I’m searing the chicken first because the pan will be wet after stir frying the vegetables. I pat them dry as much as I could be bothered to. I admit that I half-assed it but not every meal has to be perfect, you feel me?

I’m banking on the fact that vegetables wilt considerably after cooking to try and do all of the Yasai Itame in one go. I like my carrots on the softer side, so they go in first with the onion and garlic which just so happened to be in the same container.

There’s barely enough space to fit the raw cabbage, but again the vegetables cooked down considerably. Moment of truth now, will the bean sprouts fit?

That’s a daunting mound. But have faith, persevere, and the heavens will reward the bold. Oyster sauce, soy sauce and white pepper in. Stir to combine. Bean sprouts should wilt readily in all that residual heat.

Ooh, that’s a tight fit! I just barely made it, thankfully. It excites me to see so much food in one place!

And there we are. A satisfying meal doesn’t have to be fancy – a simple plate of vegetables, chicken and rice to start off a cozy evening with a full stomach.

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