If you’re like me, you need something quick and easily (and cheap, and hopefully healthy…) to whip up at night after work. It doesn’t have to be the most impressive and flavor packed meal you’ve ever made. It just has to be something decent that you can happily scoff down and which doesn’t happen to come from a box in your freezer. Enter: zucchini noodles and shrimp stir fry. This dinner is so easy to make, that even I can manage to do it. I had a ton of leftover fresh zucchini noodles (holla at ya, Wholefoods! Who needs a spiralizer?) and I wanted to try to come up with a quick fix for dinner that wasn’t a repeat of my zucchini pasta with a side salad. I immediately thought of stir fry, which is simple to make and requires hardly any ingredients at all. Those of the ingredients you do need, you likely have or can buy for cheap. Feast your eyes:
- Zucchini noodles ($3.99 @WF)
- Bag of frozen veggies of choice ($1.99 @ local grocery store)
- Soy sauce (or teriyaki, or whatever else you have. Bought a small bottle for $1.99)
- Sea salt, pepper, & olive oil
- Optional protein (.46 lb of shrimp for $5.99 @ local grocery store)
- Optional secret weapon: 5 spice powder
Not too bad, right? I already had the 5 spice powder on hand from a previous dish that Ben and I made, so I figured I would throw it in for some pizzazz. It’s made of, you guessed it, 5 different spices, including cinnamon (which I find to be the most potent), fennel, cloves, star anise (whatever that may be), and white pepper. You definitely don’t need this, but it spruces up the stir fry in an interesting and unconventional way.
Here’s how it went down:
- Cleaned the shrimp and removed the tails
- Threw about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the skillet over medium heat
- Tossed in the frozen veggies (I used a mix of peas, carrots, corn, and green beans), sprinkled in some sea salt and pepper and stirred them around for about a minute
- Threw in the raw zucchini noodles and added about three tablespoons of soy sauce and about a tablespoon of the 5 spice powder. Stirred it around for about a minute.
- Added the shrimp, another pinch of salt and pepper, and stirred everything around for about another one to two minutes (probably should have put the shrimp in the skillet before the noodles, but I’ve already admitted I’m not a cooking wizard.)
- Voila! Serve and enjoy your easy peasy lemon squeezy shrimp stir fry!
Let me know what you think if you ever give it a shot! I’m also interested to hear what you think of the 5 spice if you use it! You could take this basic recipe and make it any which way, but this was just the easiest option for me at the time. Here’s my one suggestion if you’re into using veggie noodles of any kind: incorporate protein. Especially if you’re physically active. I’ve been training for a half marathon for a few weeks now, and a meal of just noodles alone (like my pasta and mixed greens) does NOT leave me full for very long. This is likely an obvious observation. Other than that, they rock!
thedanadiaries 