This Thai Cashew Chicken recipe is so easy to make and flavorful. Paired with steamed rice, it's a delicious meal ready in 25 minutes that your whole family will enjoy.
That Cashew Chicken (Gai Pad Med Mamuang)
Let me start by telling you about the name of the dish before you think there's some mango involved in it. In Thailand, we call Cashew Chicken, 'Gai Pad Med Mamuang Himapan (ไก่ผัดเม็ดมะม่วงหิมพานต์)' or 'Gai Pad Med Mamuang' for short.
You might be familiar with the word 'gai,' which means chicken in Thai while 'pad' means stir fry. In most cases, 'med' refers to seed ot stone and 'mamuang' refers to mangos. However, the 'med mamuang' in the name does not mean mango stone. In fact, it means cashews. 'Med mamuang himapan' is the full name for cashews but we shorten it to 'med mamuang' when we speak. So yeah, gai pad med mamuang just means chicken stir fried with cashews.
Now more about the dish... We enjoy cashew chicken with steamed rice and we have it whenever we want. it doesn't matter what time of the day it is. We can have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Call me biased, but I think Thai cashew chicken is one of the best Asian stir-fried chicken dishes out there (along with Thai basil chicken, of course! Oh, and be sure to check out my other stir fries here).
This dish is a great way to enjoy chicken and it's ready in no time, making it a great midweek dinner. Cashew chicken contains a couple of ingredients, namely dried chilies, onion, green onions and cashews, that give it amazing flavors. If you want the dish to be spicy, spicy, you can add fresh chilies or more dried chilies than the recipe suggests.
Vegetables You Can Use In This Stir Fry
I like to use cabbage, onion and green onions in this recipe. Cabbage goes really well with the rest of the ingredients and onion and green onions are sort of a must for this dish.
If you're not a fan of cabbage or want to incorporate other vegetables into this chicken cashew stir fry, you can go for carrots, peppers or even baby corn.
Notes On This Cashew Chicken Recipe
This cashew chicken stir fry uses dried chilies and cashews. As both of them need to be fried before you can put them in the actual stir-fry, I won't say this dish is the simplest dish ever. However, it's still relatively easy since you only need a minute to fry each of those two ingredients, or else you'll burn them!
Overall, it's worth making this dish yourself at home. I guarantee it's better than any take-out or restaurant version and it also means you can have the stuff as much as you want. After all, it only takes 25 minutes to make.
Ingredients
- 9.87 ounces or 280 grams of chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1 pinch of salt
- ½ cup of cooking oil
- 7 dried Thai chilies
- 1 cup of raw cashews
- 1 tablespoon of cooking oil
- 1 small onion, quartered
- 5.3 ounces or 150 grams of cabbage, chopped
- 1 tablespoon of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
- 1 teaspoon of soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon of black soy sauce
- 5 green onions cut into 3 cm. pieces
Instructions
- Marinate the chicken with a pinch of salt and set aside.
- Heat ½ cup of oil over medium heat. Fry the dried chilies for 1 minute and use a slotted spoon to transfer to a dish lined with a paper towel to drain. Repeat the process with cashews and discard the oil.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan over medium heat and fry the onion.
- When the onion starts to become translucent, add the cabbage and garlic and stir. *In Thai cooking, it's common to add garlic before anything else in a stir-fry, but finely chopped garlic burns very easily. So, you can add it at this stage.
- Add the chicken and continue to stir.
- With kitchen scissors, quickly cut the dried chilies into 1 cm. pieces directly into the pan. *Some people put them in whole, but I find that they don't release any flavor whole.
- Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and black soy sauce and stir until the chicken is cooked.
- Add the cashews and green onions and stir for another minute or so. Then, remove from heat and serve warm with rice.
Vegan Adaptation
If you’re a vegan or follow a plant-based diet, you can replace chicken with tofu and oyster sauce with soy sauce (so you'll be using 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce altogether). Although soy sauce isn't thick like oyster sauce, I think you'll still enjoy the dish. And whatever you do, make sure you have warm, fluffy rice ready to serve this Thai cashew chicken with.
Other Recipes You Might Enjoy:
- Cabbage Stir Fry
- Stir-Fried Water Spinach
- Bean Sprouts Stir-Fried with Tofu Puffs
- Stir-Fried Long Beans with Bacon
- Thai Garlic Pork | Moo Gratiem
- Thai Steamed Squid with Lime Sauce
📖 Recipe
Thai Cashew Chicken | Gai Pad Med Mamuang Recipe
Ingredients
- 9.87 ounces chicken breast cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1 pinch salt
- ½ cup cooking oil
- 7 dried Thai chilies
- 1 cup raw cashews
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 1 small onion quartered
- 5.3 ounces cabbage chopped
- 1 tablespoon garlic finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon black soy sauce
- 5 green onions cut into 3 cm. pieces
Instructions
- Marinate the chicken with a pinch of salt and set aside.
- Heat ½ cup of oil over medium heat. Fry the dried chilies for 1 minute and use a slotted spoon to transfer to a dish lined with a paper towel to drain. Repeat the process with cashews and discard the oil.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan over medium heat and fry the onion.
- When the onion starts to become translucent, add the cabbage and garlic and stir.*In Thai cooking, it's common to add garlic before anything else in a stir-fry, but finely chopped garlic burns very easily. So, you can add it at this stage.
- Add the chicken and continue to stir.
- With kitchen scissors, quickly cut the dried chilies into 1 cm. pieces directly into the pan.*Some people put them in whole, but I find that they don't release any flavor whole.
- Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and black soy sauce and stir until the chicken is cooked.
- Add the cashews and green onions and stir for another minute or so. Then, remove from heat and serve warm with rice.
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