Weeknight Keto Mongolian Chicken

This easy low-carb and healthy Weeknight Keto Mongolian Chicken recipe is so tasty and delicious, it is sure to become a favourite! Tender chunks of juicy chicken, topped with a sweet and slightly salty sauce and only 15 minutes to make? Impossible? Absolutely not!

Mongolian chicken is a recipe that I have recently been making as part of our weekly meal rotation. The sweet flavor of the brown sugar sweetener mixed with the salty soy sauce and the strong ginger and garlic is incredibly addicting. And let's face it...who doesn't love Chinese food especially when you can make is so easily and much healthier (and cheaper!) than you can get from any restaurant?!

Mongolian Sauce

The basic ingredients needed to make the Mongolian sauce are quite simple. Soy sauce, vinegar and brown sugar substitute is all you need.

Soy Sauce - I recently discovered this Black Garlic Shoyu Soy Sauce after watching a cooking show with Rachel Ray. This Back Garlic Soy Sauce is actually made by Shoyu Master Craftsmen and is the perfect pairing of Shoyu and Garlic. It has complex aromas of fermented soy beans & earthiness with flavour of raisin, fig, molasses and garlic subtleties. It is not cheap and can only be purchased online but you can easily replace it with any soy sauce you have on hand.

Vinegar - I used Shaoxing vinegar. Shaoxing Wine – also known as Chinese Cooking Wine or Shaosing Wine – is an essential in Chinese cooking, the secret ingredient that makes recipes truly taste like what you get at Chinese restaurants. Chinese restaurants use it by the gallon in everything from stir fry sauces to soup broths, marinades and wontons. IF you don't have this type of vinegar, you can replace it with rice vinegar.

Brown Sugar Substitute - I used Lakanto Golden for this recipe but you can also use Swerve instead.

Ginger and Garlic Paste - I used Gourmet Garden paste as it keeps this recipe on the "easy" side since you only need to squeeze the tube and volia! If you don't have any prepared paste, you can mince your own garlic and ginger.

Green Onions - Green onions (also known as scallions) are either harvested very young from the regular bulb-forming onions we are familiar with, or they can come from other varieties that actually never form bulbs. Scallions are long, with a white stem end that does not bulge out. They have an onion-y but mild bite that is not as intense as regular onions (the white parts contain the most intense flavor). 

OPTIONAL- Yacon Syrup - Some of the authentic flavour of this recipe will be a little lost since we are not using dark brown sugar and therefore are removing some of the "molasses" flavour. Instead, you can add some Yacon syrup which is similar in texture and will add some depth to the dish. You can omit this ingredient altogheter or add about 1 teaspoon of molasses if you want. Molasses will add about 4 grams of carbs to this dish whereas 1 teaspoon of yacon syrup will only add about 2 grams of carbs.

Prepping the Keto Weeknight dinner

To keep this recipe quick and easy, there are a couple of things you can do ahead of time to make this dish the easiest weeknight dinner.

First, you want to cut your chicken into thin strips. I recently found that Tyson has a product that comes already trimmed and thinly sliced. This saves your the step of having to pound the chicken breast into thinner sections. You will need to take these thin breast and then cut them into thin sections. If you have any problems cutting thin strips, you can place the chicken in the freezer for one hour. This will freeze it just enough that slicing it will be as easy as slicing a vegetable. The meat will firm up enough that you can slice it even thinner if you’d like.

You want to slice the chicken thinly to allow it to cook quickly as well as to inhibit the chicken meat from drying out.

Secondly, if you have time the night before, I highly suggest marinating the chicken. This helps to keep the chicken moist when cooking as well as to ensure that the chicken is as flavourful as possible. If you don't have time to marinade it overnight, you can skip this step and marinade the chicken for about 1 hour.

Making Keto Mongolian Chicken

• Add 1 tablespoon of sesame oil to a wok and heat it on medium high heat
• Using a slotted spoon, remove the chicken from the marinade and add it to the hot oil
• Cook the chicken for about 2 minutes, stirring after about 1 minute
• Add in the sliced onion and the leftover marinade
• Cook an additional 2 minutes or until the sauce begins to thicken

Paleo and Whole30 substitutions

If you are following a paleo or Whole30 diet, you can make some basic ingredient swaps and still enjoy this dish!

For the soy sauce, replace it with coconut aminos. As for the brown sugar subsitute, for the paleo diet, use coconut sugar and to keep this dish Whole30 compliant, replace the sugar with date paste.

Is it spicy?

This Mongolian chicken recipe is mild and isn't spicy at all. It has soy sauce and brown sugar substitute, like Szechuan beef does, but use soy sauce instead of oyster sauce. But if you like spicier dishes, you can easily add any type of sriracha or red pepper flakes to make it spicy as you like!

Looking for more Asian-inspired Keto Recipes?

• Easy Whole30 Cashew Chicken
• Whole30 Kung Pao Chicken- Keto, Gluten-Free and Paleo
• Keto Chinese Spare Ribs - From the Chef at Ruby Foo
• Paleo Chinese Barbecued Pork
• Keto Asian Chicken Noodle Salad - Whole30 and Paleo
• Whole30 Pork Fried "Rice" - Paleo and Keto

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