Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Spicy Cashew Sauce

    Red curry chicken stir fry on a plate with cashew sauce, broccoli, and rice

    This chicken stir fry is AMAZING – say hello to thin strips of chicken with caramelized red curry, served on steamy rice with broccoli and a big dollop of this garlicky, gingery, slightly spicy silky-smooth cashew sauce. It’s easy, it’s beautiful, it always has me going back for seconds (thirds).

    In This Post: Everything You Need For Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Cashew Sauce

    • Take Me to the Chicken Stir Fry Recipe
    • Lindsay’s Notes
    • Visual Walk-Through of the Recipe
    • FAQs
    • Reviews
    Cashew sauce getting drizzled on red curry chicken stir fry

    Lindsay’s Notes

    The way I love this recipe! Wow.

    Red curry caramelized chicken stir fry, served with steamy rice and broccoli, and blanketed in a creamy, bright, super flavorful cashew sauce that makes this whole thing into a luscious, look-forward-to-it-all-day dinner dream.

    We are in a phase in our family dinner life that calls for a lot of things: Bjork is eating a lot (A LOT) of protein right now, I like to try to get a lot of flavor into every meal (per usual), and the girls like to have some familiar, kid-friendly foods to choose from.

    This has been our GO-TO for the last month or so! It hits what everybody wants.

    Bjork gets his protein with lots of chicken, I get my flavor with all that sauce and curry-caramelization on the chicken, and the girls have steamy rice and broccoli to get excited about.

    This was going to be the lead recipe for what will be our next run of the SOS series – yes, it’s coming! later this week – but I just couldn’t quite do it because of the sauce. That sauce has so much good flavor and I just couldn’t sacrifice anything to make the ingredient list shorter, so it doesn’t quite meet our SOS criteria. Which is fine. Here it is anyway, kind of SOS-y and kind of not, but delivering on that lick-every-drop-of-sauce feeling in such a big way.

    How To Make Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry

    Step 1: Make Your Cashew Sauce.

    Gather up all your ingredients…

    Ingredients for cashew sauce for red curry chicken stir fry

    and blend them into a nice smooth sauce which looks about like this. It’s divine.

    Blended cashew sauce

    Step 2: Coat the Chicken Pieces with Cornstarch and Spices.

    I like garlic powder, salt and pepper, plus the cornstarch to give it that golden brown exterior.

    Cornstarch gets added to cut up raw chicken pieces in a bowl

    Step 3: Pan Fry the Chicken with Curry Paste and Brown Sugar.

    Just like how you might make a normal curry, but rather than adding coconut milk, we are letting the chicken hold onto all that flavor. YES PLEASE!

    Caramelized chicken pieces in a pan

    Step 4: Serve with Broccoli, Rice, and Sauce.

    Cut and cook it yourself, or go the steam-in-the-bag route. Doesn’t matter. Just get it all on the plate together.

    Red curry chicken gets added to a plate with broccoli and cooked rice

    AND THEN SAUCE THE HECK OUT OF IT.

    Cashew sauce on top of red curry chicken stir fry

    This combination is so bright, satisfying, flavorful… just so incredibly good.

    The cashew-sauce-on-stir-fry idea came from the Chloe Flavor cookbook (affiliate link), which is a very delicious vegan cookbook by Chloe Coscarelli!

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    A picture of Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Spicy Cashew Sauce

    Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry with Spicy Cashew Sauce

    • Author: Lindsay
    • Total Time: 40 minutes
    • Yield: 4 servings
    Print Recipe

    Description

    Caramelized red curry chicken sits next to a bed of hot, fluffy rice and steamed broccoli and then totally sauced up with the BEST spicy cashew sauce. Ooof, this is so, so good. 

    Ingredients

    Units

    Red Curry Chicken Stir Fry:

    • 1 lb. chicken breasts
    • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
    • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • freshly ground black pepper to taste
    • 2 tablespoons avocado oil
    • 2 tablespoons red curry paste
    • 2 tablespoons brown sugar

    Spicy Cashew Sauce:

    • 1 cup roasted salted cashews
    • 1/2 cup water
    • 2 tablespoons maple syrup
    • 2 tablespoons sriracha
    • 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
    • 1 clove garlic
    • juice of 2 limes
    • 1 teaspoon ginger paste or fresh ginger
    • pinch of salt

    Veggies and Other: 

    • 2 cups small steamed broccoli florets (about 1 small head of broccoli or 1 frozen steam-in-the-bag)
    • 2–3 cups cooked rice

    Instructions

    1. Make the Spicy Cashew Sauce: Blend all ingredients in a high-powered blender until very smooth. 
    2. Prep the Chicken: Cut the chicken breasts into very thin pieces. Toss with the cornstarch, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. 
    3. Cook the Chicken: Add the avocado oil to a nonstick pan over medium high heat. Add the curry paste and brown sugar; cook for a few minutes to get it caramelizy and bubbly. Add the chicken. Toss once to coat in the sauce, then let it sit for several minutes to get the chicken nice and golden brown. Flip and repeat until chicken is cooked through. If needed, add 1-2 tablespoons of water to the pan to lift up any browned pieces that are stuck to the bottom.
    4. Serve: Serve the chicken on cooked rice, with cooked broccoli, with a lot of that yummy cashew sauce all over everything.
    • Prep Time: 30 minutes
    • Cook Time: 10 minutes
    • Category: Dinner
    • Method: Sauté
    • Cuisine: Asian-Inspired

    Keywords: chicken stir fry, red curry chicken, stir fry

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