I don’t know about you but I LOVE a good weeknight stir fry.
You can throw it together in 30 minutes or so, they’re packed with nutritious veggies, lean protein and of course, a really epic stir fry sauce to tie it all together. It’s also an excellent healthy meal to make when you have kids and very limited time. Am I right, mamas?
Today’s stir fry is one of my all time favs: cashew chicken stir fry with the option to make it with a side of coconut cauliflower rice — YUM!
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Ingredients in this cashew chicken stir fry
This delicious, healthy cashew chicken stir fry is gluten, grain & dairy free and paleo-friendly, which makes it great for anyone with dietary restrictions or preferences. Below you’ll find the ingredients I used for this recipe, but feel free to mix and match. I included some great ideas for substitutions at the bottom of this post, too!
- Veggies: this dish has broccoli, red bell pepper, red onion and shredded carrots for a delicious boost of fiber and crunch. Plus, these veggies give the stir fry a beautiful color!
- Stir fry sauce: the incredible sauce is made with cashew butter, coconut aminos (or low sodium soy sauce), fresh grated ginger, garlic and cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes if you like a little heat!
- Cauliflower rice: a bonus veggie that’s perfect for making this dish gluten & grain-free. I love how the cauliflower rice soaks up all the peanut sauce goodness. YUM. Check out my full tutorial on how to make cauliflower rice here!
- Protein: hello flavorful chicken and crunchy cashews! This healthy cashew chicken stir fry is protein-packed and guaranteed to keep you feeling satisfied until dinner. The sauce also has a cashew butter base for a boost of healthy fats + delicious flavor.
How to make cashew chicken stir fry
- First, prepare your stir fry sauce by whisking all of the sauce ingredients into a bowl. Set that aside.
- Next, you’ll cook your chicken by adding coconut oil to a large wok or pot and placing it over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot add your chicken, sprinkle with salt and pepper and fully cook it until it’s no longer pink. Add your chicken to a bowl and set aside.
- You’ll then cook all of those veggies. Add coconut oil to the same skillet and reduce the heat to medium. Add your garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant, then add in the white part of green onions (reserve green part for topping) along with the rest of your veggies. Stir fry these until the onions cook down and broccoli becomes a little tender.
- Reduce the heat to low, add the chicken and your sauce to your skillet full of veggies and gently stir to coat the veggies. You’ll cook this for another few minutes while you make the cauliflower rice to serve it with!
How to make coconut cauliflower rice
Making cauliflower rice is easier than you think, and I love how this particular version infuses sweet coconut flavor into it. Here’s how to make coconut cauliflower rice:
- Remove all greens from cauliflower and break into florets. You can either use a box grater, or a food processor to process the cauliflower into rice. If using a food processor (the easier method), simply add half of cauliflower florets to bowl of the food processor with a blade attachment. Pulse until cauliflower resembles rice. Add in remaining florets and process again until cauliflower becomes rice-like.
- Transfer to a large, clean dish towel and squeeze all the moisture out of the cauliflower.
- Add ½ tablespoon coconut oil to a large skillet and place it over medium heat. Once oil is hot, add in cauliflower rice and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper. You’ll serve this with the cashew chicken stir fry!
Customize your stir fry
This easy cashew chicken stir fry is great for using up veggies and ingredients you have on-hand!
- Other veggies to try: green beans, mushrooms, asparagus, snow peas and even water chestnuts would be delicious in this recipe! Feel free to mix and match based on what you have available.
- Try another nut butter: out of cashew butter? Peanut, almond butter or tahini would also be great options for the stir fry sauce.
- Go for a grain: if you don’t have cauliflower, this healthy cashew chicken stir fry would be delicious served with quinoa, brown rice, or even yummy stir fry rice noodles.
- Make it vegan and/or vegetarian! Feel free to use a can of chickpeas or tofu for a wonderful plant-based protein option. You can keep the rest of the ingredients as they are. So easy!
Meal prep your stir fry
Easily meal prep this cashew chicken stir fry for the week by adding 1/4 of the stir fry (chicken + veggie in sauce) with about 1 cup of the coconut cauliflower rice to a glass meal prep containers. This recipe will make 4 servings, which is perfect for weekday lunches! Simply reheat in the microwave before enjoying.
More healthy stir fry recipes to try
- 30-Minute Sesame Chicken Green Bean Stir Fry
- Healthy Orange Chicken Stir Fry with Coconut Cauliflower Rice
- Mango Chicken Stir-Fry
- Spicy Thai Peanut Chicken Sweet Potato Noodle Stir Fry
- Kung Pao Chickpea & Brussels Sprouts Stir-Fry
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I know you’re going to love this easy ginger cashew chicken stir fry recipe. Please let me know if you make it by leaving a comment and rating the recipe below. I’d love to hear from you and it helps encourage others to make the recipe too! Enjoy xo.
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Ginger Cashew Chicken Stir Fry with Coconut Cauliflower Rice
Ingredients
- For the cauliflower rice:
- ½ tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 head of cauliflower
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- For the sauce:
- 3 tablespoons cashew butter (or sub peanut butter, almond butter or tahini)
- 3 tablespoons coconut aminos or low sodium soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons warm water, to thin the sauce
- If you like it spicy: add a few shakes of red pepper flakes or a dash of cayenne pepper
- For the stir fry:
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil, divided
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
- Freshly ground salt and pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced (green and white parts divided)
- 1 red onion or yellow onion, chopped into big chunks
- 1 medium head broccoli, cut into florets
- 1 red bell pepper, julienned
- 1 large carrot, shredded
- To garnish:
- green onion
- 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
- 1/3 cup roasted cashews
Instructions
- Remove all greens from cauliflower and break into florets. You can either use a box grater, or a food processor to process the cauliflower into rice. If using a food processor (the easier method), simply add half of cauliflower florets to bowl of the food processor with a blade attachment. Pulse until cauliflower resembles rice. Add in remaining florets and process again until cauliflower becomes rice-like.
- Transfer to a large, clean dish towel and squeeze all the moisture out of the cauliflower. Set aside in a large bowl until ready to cook.
- Next prepare your stir fry sauce: In a medium bowl, whisk together the cashew butter, coconut aminos, ginger, garlic, warm water and red pepper flakes if desired. Set aside.
- Now you’re ready to cook your stir fry: Add coconut oil to a large wok or pot and place over medium high heat. Once oil is hot, add chicken and generously sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook chicken for 5-6 minutes or until fully cooked and no longer pink. Once chicken is cooked, transfer to a bowl.
- Add in the other ½ tablespoon of coconut oil to the skillet and reduce heat to medium. Add minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant, then add in the white part of green onions (reserve green part for topping), chopped red onion, shredded carrot, red bell pepper and broccoli florets. Stir fry for 5-8 minutes or until onions cook down and broccoli becomes a little tender.
- Reduce heat to low, add in chicken and your sauce, gently stirring to coat veggies and cook for another few minutes while you make the cauliflower rice.
- When veggies are cooking, make your cauliflower rice: Add ½ tablespoon coconut oil to a separate large skillet and place over medium heat. Once oil is hot, add in cauliflower rice and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper.
- There are four servings: Serve ¼ of stir fry with about 1 cup of cauliflower rice. Garnish with green onion, cilantro and cashews. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
63 comments
This looks amazing, I love Asian (or Asian inspired) food! Thanks for sharing <3
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It’s delicious! Hope you get a chance to try it!
Could you use almond butter in place of the cashew butter? My grocery store doesn’t carry cashew butter. I attempted to make some my blending raw cashews in my vitamix, but they just turned to powder…I worry the powder won’t make a good sauce? Thoughts?
You can use almond butter in this one! The cashews will turn into cashew butter after awhile (they go from a powder to a creamy texture after tons of blending!)
Hi, Im not seeing the quantity for the ingredients list:/
You’ll find the full recipe on the Healthy Glow Co. website here 🙂
This website that you link to is now closed. Is there any other way to get this recipe? It looks delicious!
This recipe is AMAZING!!! I posted it on my IG story and I have shared the recipe like 4 times now. Everyone was commenting on how good and delicious this recipe looks like. It was fantastic indeed. I’m so happy I tried it.
Love that! So happy you found this one 🙂
Happened to have all the main ingredients (except used almond butter instead of cashew) and this was seriously delicious!!! The hubby said it was one of the best meals I’ve made. Thanks so much for this wonderful recipe.
Perfect! So happy to hear that!
Made for dinner last night- so easy and delicious!
Glad you enjoyed!
This is AWESOME! I could eat the whole pan! But I’m also preggers so there’s that. Haha! It takes some time to prep all the veggies but it’s worth it! We will make this again for sure!
Haha love it! There’s a decent amount of chopping but it’s great to prep for a few meals 🙂
I made this tonight for myself and my family. WOW it was so yummy and so simple to do. I did not have cashew butter, so I used natural peanut butter and it was fantastic. My grocery store was all out of cauliflower, so we had to opt to pre-packaged cauliflower rice. It is just the same, only a little more expensive than buying it whole. We used low-sodium soy sauce, and it was perfect. 10/10 recommend this dish, and we will make again!
Perfect! So glad you enjoyed!
SO GOOD!! Made this tonight for the family and it was a huge success! I subbed chicken for ground turkey (because that’s what we had in the fridge). We like spicy so I thought the addition of red pepper flakes was perfect. Also highly recommend adding the fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice on top for an added flavor! YUM
Perfect! Glad everyone loved it!
Loved it! So much flavor. And it’s easy enough to adapt based on your diet and what you have in the house. This is my third recipe of yours that I’ve made and every single one has been amazing. Thank you.
Absolutely! So glad you’re finding recipes here that you love 🙂
This is a new family favorite!
I used almond butter, was generous with the red pepper flakes and doubled the ginger. That sauce kicks so good.
Amazing! So happy to hear that 🙂
Such a great recipe! DELICIOUS!
Glad you enjoyed!
Monique you saved our dinner with this recipe! We tried to make cashew chicken from a recipe from a different website, and it came out so poorly. I rescued the veggies and chicken and threw out the sauce and looked through your website for a replacement sauce. I was excited to find this recipe; I whipped up the sauce and added it to the chicken and veggies. SO good! It completely saved our dinner!
Amazing! I’m so glad you found this one!
Another tasty healthy dinner recipe from what’s becoming my favorite site. I love that it uses a bunch of vegetables that I’m likely have around the house instead of specialty items I’d have to remember to buy. When I got all set to make it, I opened my peanut butter and realized it was crunchy, not smooth. It tasted just fine though. Maybe I’ll use crunchy next time too. 😊
Absolutely! Crunchy sounds just as delicious 🙂
I used Tahini instead of cashew butter and it turned out AMAZING! 10/10 recommend. The most time consuming part is chapping the vegetables. To save some time and effort, I buy frozen cauliflower rice and just throw it in the microwave. Thank you for this incredible and easy dinner recipe!
Love that! So glad you enjoyed!
I used frozen cauliflower rice for this recipe to save time. It made for a great meal prep recipe. I tried this recipe having never really made a homemade stir fry. I was very pleased with the sauce and they included ingredients I could easily find at the grocery. Super easy, in my opinion! I always feel so accomplished when I cook Monique’s recipes!
Perfect! Such a great dinner 🙂 Hope you keep finding recipes here that you love!
Sooo perfect! I love making it when I have friends over for dinner, everyone always loves it 😋😋
I made this awhile ago and forgot to rate/comment but wanted to now. This meal was incredible! Loved all the flavors and it was really easy to make. Love it and will make again!
Amazing! So glad you loved it!
I’ve made this recipe about a dozen times now, it’s a bi-weekly staple!! I use almond butter since that is what I usually have on hand, and load up on the broccoli, onions, and bell peppers. I mix the cauliflower rice with brown rice (half and half) for my family’s preference. LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS!!
So happy to hear that! One of our fav dinners, too.
This is my go-to healthy take on Chinese food!! This has amazing flavor. Love this recipe so much! Have made it 5 times in past few months.
YAY, so glad you’re loving it! Thanks for letting me know 🙂
The whole family loves this one! We use peanut butter and sometimes make the cauliflower rice and other times, regular white rice. Always a hit!
So happy to hear you guys are loving it, Rachel 🙂
Oh my gosh, The taste is still in my mouth and I want to go take a fork to the leftovers in my fridge. So yummy. Love a good healthy stir fry. The crunch of the cashews on top added a nice crunch. I didn’t have cashew butter so I used peanut butter which isn’t quite as original but did the trick! Next time I make it, I’ll get some cashew butter! Thank you as always Monique!
SO glad you loved this one so much, Joy!
I made this for the first time tonight and it was amazing! I used Almond butter since that is what I had and it turned out great. I’m looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow.
Awesome! So glad to hear that almond butter worked well in here. Thanks for the review!
Your recipes always come out perfectly, and make me feel like a successful cook.
Aw, you ARE a successful cook! I’m so glad that this turned out delicious–great job 🙂
Made this for supper tonight all the way from South Africa! Delicious and light. I used tahini as I didn’t have any nut butter at hand and it was so yummy! Will definitely make this again.
Hello!! So happy you tried and loved it, Candice!
This stir fry sauce is delicious!! Highly recommend to make this!!
Yay, so happy you loved it!! Thanks for letting me know 🙂
I make this once a week!! It is so delicious and a great healthy meal. The cashew butter sauce is so yummy!
Ahh I love that! SO happy you’re a fan 🙂
Quickly becoming one of my favorite recipes. I made 1.5x the sauce and served over white rice. Delicious!
This is the sooo good! I have made this at least 10 times over the past year. Love the flavor of the sauce — I usually double it so there’s tons of sauce!
That’s amazing — I’m so happy you love it, Lindsay! Great call to double the sauce 🙂
Okay, I am OBSESSED with this recipe! I love a good stir fry and this was fantastic. I didn’t have cashew butter or a red onion so I used tahini for the sauce and a yellow onion in the stir fry. Not sure if I just had way more veggies – they took a lot longer than 5-8 minutes to cook down before adding the chicken and sauce, But I’m good with it because it was worth the wait! Cauliflower and me don’t get really along so I made your coconut rice recipe with short grain brown rice. I did add about 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes to the sauce and couldn’t hardly taste it so I think I’ll go with cayenne pepper next time for a bigger kick. As my hubby said, “This smells, and looks…and tastes pretty damn good.” High praise from him!
Thanks for sharing, it was hit! 😋
Yay!! I’m so glad 🙂 Thanks so much for the review!
Super yummy recipe! I only had almond butter and it was perfect. Added a dash of cayenne for a kick and green beans instead of broccoli because it’s what I had and it was so warm and comforting. Will definitely add this into the winter rotation!
I’ve been meaning to leave a review for months/years. This sauce is a *staple* in my dinner rotation!
YUM! I am so glad you’re loving this recipe, Gabi ❤️ Appreciate your review!