Chicken Lettuce Wraps w/Spicy Peanut Sauce

Low carb recipe alert!  Yes, this recipe is another attempt to lower my carb intake, but guess what?  It's also super tasty.  I've had lettuce wraps at restaurants before, but I don't think I've ever made them before.  I definitely haven't made this recipe before, but will definitely have to make it again because it turned out so well.  I love the flavor and texture combination of this dish because it really hits all the notes you want it to.  You get a really great crunch from the lettuce, carrots, and the peanuts (or cashews) on top.  I also made the peanut sauce a little spicy, which paired really well with the creaminess of the peanut butter and the acidity from the picked carrots.  In each bite, you should get the perfect combination of salty, spicy, acidic, fatty, and light.  

Now I know that this isn't the typical type of lettuce people use for lettuce wraps, but it's what they had at the store.  And it really worked out well - it was kind of just like a really long taco.  The real method to creating the perfect lettuce wrap, much like a taco, is not to over-stuff it.  I only added 3-4 slices of chicken to each lettuce leaf so I could pack in everything else as well.  So when you're building your wraps, just remember that you want to be able to actually eat it without 1/2 the contents falling out!

Total Time: 20-25 minutes + 24 hours to marinade the chicken

Servings: 5-6

Ingredients:

For the Marinade:

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 tbs toasted sesame oil

For the Sauce:

1/2 cup Peanut Butter

Juice of one lime (about 3 tbs)

1 tbs honey

1 tbs hot sauce

4 tbs soy sauce

2 tbs toasted sesame oil

For the Wraps:

1-2 heads of lettuce (12 large leaves)

2 1/2 - 3 lbs chicken thighs

1 large cucumber

1 cup shredded carrots

1/4 cup chopped peanuts

Optional:

1/2 cup pickled carrots

Instructions:

1. Add your marinade ingredients and chicken to a zip-top bag and allow to marinade for 2-24 hours.  Again, I always marinade my chicken for 24 hours so I get great flavor out of it.
2. Mix the sauce ingredients together and set aside.
3. Chop your cucumbers into matchsticks.  I used a mandolin with a matchstick attachment which made this process really easy!
4. Add your marinated chicken to a cast iron pan on medium-high heat.  Cook for about 5 minutes on the first side, then flip and cook for 2-4 additional minutes, until cooked through. 
5. Remove your chicken from the pan and slice thinly.
6. Add your topping ingredients to a large plate and your chicken to another.  Create your wraps and enjoy!

Here is what our topping plate looked like.  To make the wraps, I first placed 3-4 slices of chicken on the lettuce, then the carrots and cucumber, topped by the pickled carrots, sauce, and crushed nuts.  You really want to make sure to get the peanut sauce evenly coated across your wrap so you get some with every bite.

Here's how your finished lettuce wrap should look.  Notice how even with only 3-4 slices of chicken, it's pretty much full to the brim.  This is as much stuffing as you want in each wrap.  Any more and all the ingredients would fall out while you eat it.

While the addition of the pickled carrots is totally optional, I found that they gave a really great punch of brightness and acidity which was needed to counterbalance the fattiness of the chicken and the creaminess of the peanut sauce.  The choice is yours, but I definitely recommend going for it.  They're super easy to make and only take 2 hours to quick pickle.  You can find the recipe here at the bottom of my Guerrilla Tacos post.

Nutrition Facts:

Calories: 644

Protein: 74g

Carbs: 24g

Fat: 26g

*Based off two large lettuce wraps = 1 serving