Quick Chicken Stir Fry (without the shop-bought stir fry sauce!) (2024)

My tasty chicken and veggie stir fry – a quick mid-week meal with a kick of chilli heat that you can get on the table in less than 20 minutes!

It’s very easy to fall into the stir fry trap – a few veggies, maybe some meat and a jar of stir fry sauce.
We all do it, but it can get boring very quickly! Sauces from a jar have their advantages, but making your own sauce can be just as quick and you can easily change it up to make an endless number of variations

This is a sweet and spicy version – made using sweet chilli sauce, chillies and brown sugar – plus a few other goodies. If you don’t want too much heat, then leave out the fresh chillies – my kids still eat every bite even with a little sweet chilli sauce!

What do we need

How to make it

Full recipe with detailed steps in the recipe card at the end of this post.

• Coat the chicken in a dusting of cornflour, salt and pepper, then fry in a wok with oil over a high heat until lightly browned and cooked through.

• Add in sugar snap peas, peppers, garlic, soy sauce, Chinese rice vinegar, brown sugar, sweet chilli sauce and tomato ketchup.

• Continue to heat on high, tossing everything together until heated through, then stir through chopped spring onions and chopped chilli, heat for one more minute until they’re hot, but still crunchy.

Serve with rice or noodles.

Sauce Variations

• You could add a little more sugar, plus the juice of a lime for a tangy-sweet sauce.
• Try adding pineapple chunks and juice, a tablespoon of malt vinegar and sugar and an extra squirt of ketchup for a quick sweet and sour stir fry.
• Add hoisin and oyster sauce for an earthier sweet/salty flavour

Pile in the veggies and watch the kids eat them up with no complaints! So much tastier than take-out!

Chicken thighs or breast?

You can use either for this recipe. Coating the chicken in the cornflour helps to keep the chicken juicy and tender, so go with your own preference.

I use chicken breast for this recipe because I find chicken breast generally less fiddly to slice up.

Vegetarian version

Swap out the chicken for quorn, mushrooms or tofu for a vegetarian alternative.

Veggie swaps/additions

You can use whatever you’ve got in that will cook relatively quickly over a high heat. Such as:

Baby corn, beansprouts, bamboo shoots, tender stem brocolli, strips of carrot, asparagus, strips of cabbage (white or green), leeks, radish or courgette (zucchini).

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Watch how to make it

This post was first published in March 2016. Updated in May 2020 with new photos, video and recipe tips.

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links – which means if you buy the product I get a small commission (at no extra cost to you). If you do buy, then thank you! That’s what helps us to keep Kitchen Sanctuary running. The nutritional information provided is approximate and can vary depending on several factors. For more information please see our