Recipe - Chicken Lettuce Wraps

I mentioned last week that I like to try to duplicate my favorite restaurant foods at home.  Several years ago I set out to do that for the ever-popular P. F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps.  I fully acknowledge this is a "copycat" recipe inspired by P. F. Chang's, (but pretty close to theirs, if I do say so myself).  This is a crowd-pleasing appetizer which I'm sure many of you have eaten before, but for those that haven't, it's a one-of-a-kind taste that you start craving when you haven't had it in awhile.  I like to eat out as much as the next person, but it isn't always a good economic choice, especially when you have a crowd to feed, and it's fun to try something special at home when everyone is together for events such as General Conference coming up in a few weeks.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

2 lbs raw Chicken (boneless breasts or thighs)
1 lb Mushrooms, diced
2 small cans Water Chestnuts, drained and chopped
2 small bunches Green Onions, sliced
3 cloves Garlic, minced
Sesame oil for browning
Chinese Rice Sticks 
2 heads of Iceberg lettuce
Vegetable oil for frying Rice Sticks

Sauce:  

1/2 cup Hoisin Sauce
1/2 cup Oyster Sauce
2 Tablespoons Sugar
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

Some of the ingredients, such as the Hoisin Sauce, Oyster Sauce, Sesame Oil, or Rice Sticks may be unfamiliar if you have not used them before.  Here are examples of what you should look for (although you will find different brands depending on what store you go to).  They should all be located in the Asian Food section of the grocery store.

Here are the Hoisin Sauce, Oyster Sauce, and Sesame Oil:

And the Rice Sticks  may look something like this. . .

The first thing you need to do is grind up your chicken.  This can be done in your food processor, an old-fashioned hand crank meat grinder, or you can just chunk it up, place on a tray in the freezer for 30 minutes or so, then chop as fine as you can with a sharp chopping knife. Freezing it a bit makes you able to cut it into smaller pieces.  When you are finished grinding or chopping, it should look like this:

Refrigerate until needed.

I should have said the first thing you do is get your lettuce crisping, because this needs to happen a day ahead at least.  Buy 2 nice heads of Iceberg lettuce, pop out the core, wash well, drain well, and place in covered bowls in fridge upside down (to finish draining well) until ready to use. 

Once you get your chicken ready and have diced your mushrooms and sliced your green onions, set them aside and work on your rice noodles.

Now this is the fun part--cooking the rice sticks.  You have to see this to believe it, so I am attaching a video of someone preparing them.  It takes only minutes once your oil is hot to fry the whole box, and only seconds for each batch.  It's the coolest thing ever . . . .  watch!

Just in case the video for some reason doesn't work for you, it just shows how you bring a small pan of oil to about 400 degrees, break the rice sticks up and separate them out a bit, and in VERY small batches, throw them in the hot oil and almost immediately take them out again and drain on paper towels.  They should puff up immediately--if they don't you either put too many in or your oil is the wrong temperature.  Test a couple of little pieces to check if it's right before putting a bunch in.  They aren't supposed to get brown--they just crisp up--and that's all there is to it.

Now fully cook your ground chicken in sesame oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Add mushrooms and cook briefly until they are done and drain off any liquid.  Add garlic and cook another minute or two.

Mix together sauce ingredients.  Add this to the chicken mixture along with the green onions.  Cook another couple of minutes, then add the water chestnuts.  Keep warm.

Take both heads of lettuce and slice off 1/4 to 1/3 of the head opposite the core end and separate into little bowls.  Make sure they're nice and dry.  Put away the rest of the lettuce for another use.  You can do this hours ahead of time if you wish, and have it all ready to go.

Place rice sticks onto a large platter and spoon chicken mixture over the top.  Put out lettuce and let everyone make their own servings at the table, wrapping lettuce around like a burrito with chicken and rice sticks on each wrap. Enjoy!