P.F. Chang’s Copy-Cat Lettuce Wraps Appetizer

We’ve eaten at P.F. Chang’s a handful of times and one of the go to menu items we order each time is their Lettuce Wraps appetizer. We had to figure out how to make this delicious appetizer ourselves and looked at a number of copy cat recipes available and came up with the below variation of our own. The important question for us was what wine to pair with this dinner!?!? It’s no secret that we are HUGE fans of reds but wanted to try this with a white. Don’t get us wrong, we whole heartedly think that a light red would compliment these ingredients more than adequately. However, we chose an Argentinian Chardonnay this time which by itself was a beauty that you can read more about by clicking here. So, how do you make this recipe, here we go:

Serves a hungry 4-5 – Cooking time can vary but estimate would be 20 minutes for prep and 20 minutes for cooking.

Ingredients:

1 ½ tablespoons of olive oil

1 pound ground chicken

1 pound ground pork

3 cloves garlic (we use two loaded teaspoons of minced garlic… can you really ever have too much garlic?)

1 white onion, diced

1/3 cup hoisin sauce (more if desired)

3 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Sritacha

1 can (8 oz) drained and chopped water chestnuts

2 green onions (optional)

Pepper (salt if you prefer, however, the hoisin sauce and soy sauce will provide plenty of salt)

1 head of iceberg lettuce (or Romaine)

1. Heat the olive oil in a wok over medium high heat. Add the ground chicken and ground pork and cook until browned. While cooking be sure to consistently mix and break up the meat to a crumble. Once cooked thoroughly, drain the excess fat.
2. Add the meat back to the wok and stir in the hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sriracha, onions and garlic and continue cooking on medium high heat, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in the water chestnuts and continue cooking on medium high heat for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Tear off lettuce leaves’ and spoon the cooked meat into the center of each individual lettuce leaf, garnish with chopped green onions and enjoy like a taco… bigger sized lettuce leaves’ can be rolled like a burrito … read on for a twist!

Ok so do you want to make this a full meal instead of an appetizer? We added rice when serving and ate these like burritos to make it more filling. Below is a recipe of rice we make:

Ingredients:

1 cup Jasmine rice… (follow instructions on package, but ours takes about 15-20 minutes)

Olive oil

1 tablespoon of salted butter

1 bunch cilantro

½ lime

Cracked pepper

1. Cook the rice per the instructions you have (we add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the water when cooking the rice to prevent sticking… while the rice is softening add the butter and pepper. Toward the end of cooking add the cilantro and lime, stir until done and enjoy.