This was the second Chinese dish I ever learned how to make – the first being Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup. For some reason – probably laziness and the fact that KanTong makes a sweet and sour sauce in a jar – I stopped making it from scratch. I would love to know why that is, did I think this was harder to make than it actually is? Never, ever again will I use that jar sauce because this recipe is so simple and easy and incredibly delicious. It is taken from the Golden Circle website but I have changed it slightly to suit ourselves.
You will need –
600g chicken breast fillets chopped how you like them.
your choice of cooking oil to cover frypan (I use half coconut/half olive)
1 leek (chopped how you like)
1 green capsicum (chopped how you like)
2-3 carrots (chopped how you like)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tin pineapple (somewhere between 400-500g) – reserve the pineapple juice
1/4 cup Beerenberg tomato sauce
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
First cook the chicken – you can dust the chicken in flour if you like, you will find that thickens the sauce slightly. I’ve done it both ways and probably won’t flour it again. Remove the chicken from the pan once browned.
Then sweat the garlic, leeks, capsicum and carrot for a few minutes. While this is sweating, into a bowl place the reserved pineapple juice, the tomato sauce, the white wine vinegar and the soy. There, you just made your sauce! It will look brown and that might seem odd.
Once your vegies have sweat up a storm, add in your chopped pineapple and stir around a bit, mix it all together.
Add your chicken back in. Pour the sauce in, allow to simmer. You will see the sauce change colour It will go from brown to that traditional pink-red colour..
Serve over rice. This makes enough for us to have dinner plus 2 lunch serves. You could also double the amount of sauce and have that over rice as a snack or lunch, if you like. You could add in other vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy, snow peas, brussel sprouts chopped finely, zucchini, water chestnuts, baby corn, cabbage might be good, too.
If you look at the Golden Circle recipe it uses a much larger tin of pineapple, and it also says to use Worcestershire sauce. We do not use that, and it is fine without it. I think any more pineapple would be too much for us, and I would steer in the direction of adding other vegetables instead.
This meal is on the weekly rotation for a while because we are enjoying it so much. The only other recipe I need to learn to make from scratch is a version of Honey and Mustard chicken – I will be giving that recipe a try in future weeks. We used to use the Chicken Tonight sauce but it is far too salty for The Other Half to consume now. I would like to try some other Chinese style made from scratch sauces as well. ;)
For some reason, I suffered temporarily blindness after I read the word “recipe.” Fortunately, my version returned in time for me to at least enjoy the photos.
That really does look like authentic sweet and sour chicken! I’ve tried to make it too in the past but it’s hard because I like it very sweet, where Alex likes it very sour…I’m going to have to perfect each one separately and make 2 different pans! :)
I would definitely add cauliflower to this, but not broccoli, I think the flavour is too strong.