If you’ve ever been to P.F. Chang’s, you know what I’m talking about when I say the lettuce wraps are the most-popular item on the appetizer menu, if not the entire menu. If you visit during happy hour, 3-7 p.m. on weeknights, you get a huge plateful for $6, enough for a meal.
Platter after platter are carried out of the kitchen loaded with the sweet-crunchy appetizer that, for many diners, doubles as an entree.
The chain has proprietary rights over their recipe, but it’s fairly simple to replicate. In fact, the restaurant’s lettuce wrap recipe is one of the most-copied in the restaurant industry, according to the company.
Most copycat recipes I’ve seen call for mixing the diced chicken with chopped mushrooms and water chestnuts, but you can make the filling for the lettuce wraps with beef, shrimp, pork or vegetables only.
P.F. Chang’s uses iceberg lettuce for the wrapper, but have you ever tried wrapping anything with the crunchy inner leaves of a head of iceberg lettuce? They break apart. I don’t know how P.F. Chang’s does it or how many heads of lettuce are wasted trying to get a few perfect leaves, but according to their website, they go through more than 3 million heads a year. That’s a lot of lettuce.