A Byte Upon The Sea
2 min read Cooking

Sweet and sour chicken

Zane Ouimet

I use this dish as a meal prep. I had enough chicken and vegetables for 7 days (3 days 2 people + an extra).

Ingredients

For sweet and sour sauce

  • 200 ml water
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 110 g sugar
  • 4 tablespoons Ketchup
  • 120-240 ml  (2 cans) pineapple juice (drained from canned pineapple)
  • 200 ml rice wine vinegar
  • 80-100g cornstarch

For chicken

  • 1000g chicken breast
  • 3 teaspoon MSG
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
  • 1.5 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 3/4 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

For batter

  1. 3 eggs
  2. 6 tablespoons cornstarch
  3. 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
  4. 3/4 tablespoon MSG

For stir-frying

  • 1-2 cans pineapple chunks
  • 3 green bell peppers
  • 2 red bell peppers
  • 2 yellow bell peppers
  • 1-2 medium red onions

Instructions

  1. Prepare everything. Cube all chicken breast into 1 inch cubes, slice peppers and onions into similar sized pieces. Strain canned pineapple into bowl and preserve juice.
  2. Marinate chicken: Add the garlic and onion powder, MSG, sesame oil, white pepper and salt to chicken and mix until coated. Set aside for 5-20 minutes while you prepare the rest.
  3. Prepare the sauce: In a saucepan heat water and mix in cornstarch and combine salt, sugar, ketchup, and rice wine vinegar. Cook on low until sauce thickens.
  4. Prepare the batter: whisk the 3 eggs in a shallow bowl, In another mix remaining batter dry ingredients.
  5. Deep fry the chicken: Using a wok or deep fryer heat oil (more for larger batches less for smaller - I use less to avoid wasting oil but it takes longer) to ~/175°C. Dip and coat pieces of marinated chicken in the whisked eggs and dredge them in the dry mixture. Make sure the chicken is fully coated in the batter and place each piece into the oil. Cook until chicken turns a golden brown. Remove and rest on a drying rack or paper towel lined tray.'
  6. Prepare rice: For me this means rinse, and add 1 cup rice to 2 cups water, bring to a boil, cover and set to low for 15 minutes. You can easily expand this depending on the size of your pot. For the entirety of recipe written here I'd reccommend 2 cups dried rice.
  7. (Optional) Re-fry again. This step will help further crisp-ify the batter which makes it stand up better to the sauce.
  8. Stirfry and assemble: At this point all that is left is to assemble the dish. Working in batches take a tablespoon of oil and heat to near smoking in a wok, add 3-4 tablespoons pineapple chunks and several cups of the prepared vegetables and stir fry until vegetables are bright but not soggy. Add propotional amount (depending on you preferred ration of vegetables to chicken) of the deepfried chicken. Stir frying continuously pour on some of the prepared sauce and coat everything.
  9. Serve over cooked rice.