Thursday Dinner

Crunchy Shrimp Stir-Fry

Usually when I make stir-fry, I use chicken. I thaw it, cube it, marinate it in soy sauce, toss it in cornstarch, stir-fry it, remove it from the pan, stir-fry my veggies, then add the chicken back at the end. It's delicious, but time-consuming.

Last night I wanted that taste, but didn't feel like putting forth that amount of effort. I remembered that I had a box of SeaPak popcorn shrimp in the freezer and decided to try to shortcut the process. (There are frequent coupons for this product and both Food Lion and Harris Teeter regularly put it on sale BOGO. When you can combine the two, it's about a buck a box.)

I made the rice in the microwave as I always do. When the rice had 15 minutes left, I put the shrimp in the oven according to the package directions. When the shrimp had about 5 minutes left, I put the veggies in the skillet to stir-fry. (The veggie blend I use is called Asparagus Stir-Fry and it's from WalMart, sold in the frozen vegetable case.) Everything was done at about the same time, so I poured in about 1/3 bottle Kikkoman stir-fry sauce into the veggies, tossed in the shrimp hot from the oven, and served the whole thing over rice.

It was so awesome (and so easy!) it may become my new standard way of doing stir-fry. Even The Kid, who isn't crazy about breaded shrimp, gobbled it down and said to always make it this way from now on.

Totals:

$1 - shrimp (BOGO + coupon)
$1.39 - vegetables
.60 - stir fry sauce ($1.79/bottle at WalMart)
.20 - rice

$3.19 for dinner for 3