Garlic Lovers Thai Basil Chicken
Learn how to make a restaurant-style Thai basil chicken! This is the perfect weeknight dinner to throw together. Make it with diced chicken breast or ground chicken. So good you'll want to make it every week!
Servings: 5 -6 servings
Ingredients
Thai Basil Chicken Stir Fry:
- 1 ½ pound chicken breasts chopped into small pieces (see notes)
- 12 cloves garlic
- 4-12 birds eye chilies see notes
- 1 shallot finely minced
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 cups holy basil
Sauce:
- 3 tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons golden mountain sauce
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- PULSE: add the garlic cloves and the bird's eye chilies to a mortar and pestle and break them down. Alternately, you can do this in a small spice grinder or a food processor; set aside.
- SAUCE: Mix the ingredients for the sauce along with 3 tablespoons of water in a small bowl, set aside.
- BASIL CHICKEN: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and fry the chili and garlic along with the minced shallot for roughly 1 minute or until fragrant, then, add the chicken. Crumble the chicken using a wooden spoon the way you’d crumble ground beef and let it cook for 3-4 minutes. Drizzle in the prepared sauce and stir to combine. When the chicken is done, stir in the basil and let it cook for 1 minute or until it *just* starts to wilt. Turn off the heat at that point and serve warm over a bed of jasmine rice topped with sesame seeds!
Notes
- Thai chilies are hot! If you want to make this mild, use roughly 4 bird's eye chilies. 12 chilies will make this what restaurants say to be Thai hot. We used 6 peppers and it was just right for our taste buds. You can replace the bird's eye chilies with 2 Fresno chilies if you want it to be super mild. Unfortunately, peppers are critical ingredients in this recipe so you can't just omit them.
- You can use ground chicken or chop up your own chicken. I usually just mince up the chicken breasts into 1/4- 1/2 inch pieces here.
