What To Do With Condiment Pouches From Chinese Takeout? Make Stirfry!

I like nothing better than saving money. At best I would be considered thrifty – and at worst, cheap.

Sometimes this need for frugality is assisted by ingenuity in times of need.

We love stirfry. Every chance we get we make it, especially when it’s such a great way to use up leftover rice, meat and vegetables.

Two nights ago I had leftover rice to use up so decided to make yet another stirfry. I pre-cooked two chicken breasts and sliced them, included the leftover rice, and added sliced carrots, bell pepper, onion and zucchini.

My dilemma though, was what to do for a sauce. Usually I have a frozen stirfry sauce that comes with one of those frozen vegetable mixes from Costco in our freezer and use a bit of that. However, we had decided recently that we didn’t really like these vegetables and stopped getting them.

My first thought was to add soy sauce, but we had recently run out of that as well, so I suddently thought of all of the soy sauce packets I’d been saving from our Chinese takeout orders (Mark’s favorite). I hept them in a tub in the fridge and as I reached for a couple, I noticed the packets of plum sauce as well. Suddenly I had a ‘brainwave’ (I can just hear my late father saying upon hearing the word ‘brainwave’, “Well, there’s trouble!”) Why not try mixing the soy sauce and plum sauce together?

As soon as the little bit of water used to lightly steam the carrots and zucchini in the wok had almost completely disappeared, I added two packets each of soy sauce and plum sauce and continued cooking the stirfry. Then I added the leftover rice, stirring to coat with the sauce and once everything was up to temperature, I served.

It was yummy! I’m going to use this trick all the time – or at least for as long as those little packets last.