Brown Garlic Sauce

One of our favorite meals to throw together is a stir-fry. They're easy, they're healthy (lots of veggies!), and they're always really tasty. Plus, there are so many variations to make. Want to switch it up from the usual? Add some new vegetables, or try a new sauce.

Today, we decided to do just that. The new sauce, that is. I found a recipe for a garlic sauce on RecipeZaar, and we whipped it up and used it to cover a stir-fry that we made with chicken and vegetables (broccoli, carrots, onions, water chesnuts, and baby corn).

The whole mixture was served over brown rice and it was quite good! The sauce was also pretty easy to throw together, so we'll definitely be making this again. The garlic flavor was not overwhelming, despite the hefty amount of it included in the recipe.

We couldn't find rice wine (note: it's NOT rice vinegar) in our grocery store, so we had to use one of the substitutes I found through Google--apple juice. Also, we didn't want to buy white pepper just for this dish, so we used regular ol' black pepper. We didn't notice any foul effects from our substitutions.

I also read in the comments that if you use regular soy sauce, this can be quite salty. Thankfully, we always use low-sodium everything, so we thought it was perfect. If all you have is regular soy sauce, you may want to start off using less soy sauce and doing a few taste tests to see if you need to add more.

Enjoy!

Brown Garlic Sauce
(Source: RecipeZaar)

Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup soy sauce
- 1/2 cup chicken broth
- 1/3 cup rice wine (or apple juice)
- 3 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon white pepper (or black pepper)
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/4 cup water

Directions:
1. In a bowl, combine soy sauce, broth, rice wine, sugar, sesame oil and white pepper.

2. Dissolve the cornstarch in 1/4 cup water.

3. Heat a pan over high heat; add the cooking oil, swirling to coat; add the garlic and ginger; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 15 seconds.

4. Add the soy sauce mixture; bring to a boil.

5. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 1 minute.

6. Add the cornstarch solution and cook, stirring, until the sauce boils and thickens.