This healthy stir fry sauce is the perfect recipe for everyday stir frying! It is quick and easy and contains no artificial sweeteners!
Stir frying has got to be the worlds best quick healthy dinner tricks out there. Throw some noodles on to boil or some rice in the rice cooker. Then empty out the fridge and harvest basket and chop it all into a stir fry. Dinner on the table in under an hour!
But you’ve gotta have a good stir fry sauce. I’ve tried a bunch of them over the years and honestly couldn’t find one that I really liked. I really try to not feed our family sugar on a consistent basis in our basic foods and it is almost impossible to find a stir fry sauce that isn’t riddled with high fructose corn syrup. I really wanted to find a healthy stir fry sauce that was easy and fast to make from scratch.
And I finally did!
This one is great. It’s simple, thickens evenly and has a great balance of sweet, tangy and garlicy to blend easily with just about anything you can think of. It also doesn’t have any artificial sweeteners in it so you eat it and feed it to your family (if you have one) with a clear conscious!
Missing an ingredient below? Try our 3 Ingredient Easy Teriyaki Sauce instead!
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- ½ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 4 tablespoons pineapple, crushed
- 2 tablespoons pineapple juice
- 2 tablespoons garlic
- Mix soy sauce, rice vinegar and cornstarch in pan with whisk until cornstarch mostly dissolves.
- Add remaining ingredients.
- Cook til bubbly and thickened (about 5 minutes)
- Remove from heat until stir fry is complete. Add sauce in and toss stir fry. Serve immediately.
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How will the sauce turn out without the rice vinegar?
It will be less acidic and less balanced.
I don’t currently have pineapple so I was wondering if oranges would be a nice substitute?
Hey Nadchielly! Oranges could be interesting. If nothing else using the orange juice would make up for the pineapple juice. Let us know if you tried it!
I just made a stir fry with this sauce for dinner and it was very much enjoyed by myself and my parents đ very delicious. Thank you for sharing đ
This receipe sounds good, Id like to try it but is there a healthy substitute for the Soy sauce, cause isn’t soy sauce very high in sodium? Thank you for any advice you can give. Have a good day.
Hi Imran,
We use low sodium soy sauce which is good in this recipe. You could also try tamari sauce but I have not tested this recipe with it but cook with it frequently now and think it should translate very similarly in this application.
Hope that helps!
Dani
Considering making a good batch of this and then using half straight away and freezing half for the next week’s meals. Do you think there would be any issue freezing it?
Hey Richard, I’ve never frozen it before but I’d love to hear how it works for you if you try it! Thanks!
Dani
How long would leftovers stay good for if I were to double/triple the recipe? I would like to make a small container of it around.
Hey Scott,
I would say it would likely last a good while, at least a week if not quite a bit longer. But I haven’t tested this. The pineapple would be the quickest thing to breakdown and the sauce may separate over time since it’s made with cornstarch. Reheating them and whisking will bring it back together.
Let me know if you test it out!
Dani
I made this yesterday and it was delicious! My boyfriend liked it a lot, too. It’s just enough sweetness and tanginess and saltiness, it balances it so well!
While it was waiting in the pan though it became very very thick, like a paste, which was difficult to mix into the stir fry. It became better again when it heated up and by the time it was done it was perfect again. I’ll use less starch next time – I used potato starch, so maybe it’s stronger? Or maybe my tbsp was too packed? Not sure what happened. Luckily it didn’t impact flavour!
Hey Anne!
Yes this is actually a pretty high ratio of cornstarch to liquid so it will thicken quite a bit when it stands. Makes it great for brushing on chicken etc but can be just a little too thick if it’s not warm. You can scale back the starch or thin with a bit of chicken stock or water no problem! Also the longer you cook the thicker it will become so definitely keep that in mind when you remove it from the heat that it will be thicker than you see it in the pan.
Hope that helps!
xoxo Dani