This Chinese sweet and sour chicken recipe is made with super crispy chicken, homemade sweet and sour sauce, pineapple and multicolored peppers, a tasty dish, much better homemade than at Take Away!
Sweet and sour chicken is a classic Chinese recipe which is made of:
Fried chicken: cubed chicken fillets dipped in egg, then in flour, then fried. I like to use chicken fillets but you can also use boneless thighs and if I have to make a large quantity I opt for a turkey fillet
Vegetables: a little garlic and multicolored peppers briefly sautéed, I added shiitake mushrooms because I like them a lot, it is not done in the original recipe so it is optional
For the pineapple, I always use sliced pineapple in syrup, so convenient! As it is already quite soft I never cook it, I cut my slices in pieces and I distribute them last when the recipe is finished
The sauce: a sweet and sour, syrupy sauce that will really bring the sweet and sour touch and flavor to this dish. The first time I made it, I tasted it, big mistake LOL ! On its own, this sauce tastes weird, really sweet, really sour, I winced and wondered if I was even going to use it, but once added to the crispy chicken and soft peppers, it’s just perfect, top notch! So trust me on this one, follow the instructions and don’t taste it!
I like to do it this way:
Cut up my chicken and set it aside in a quick marinade
Sauté my vegetables and set aside
Prepare the bittersweet salsa and set it aside.
Only then do I get to the chicken, the most time consuming part of this recipe. Once the chicken has been dipped in the egg and flour, it must be fried immediately otherwise it forms a sticky mass and becomes impossible to work with
Lastly I heat up the sweet and sour sauce, add the peppers, pineapple and fried chicken, mix and it’s ready to eat!
Ingredients:
Chicken:
- 450 g. Chicken fillets, cut into 2.5 to 3 cm cubes
- 2 tbsp. Soy sauce
- 1/2 c.c. Baking soda
- 3 Eggs
- 240 g. Flour
Vegetables:
- 1 clove of garlic, pressed
- 2 large peppers, 1 red and 1 yellow, cut into 2.5 to 3 cm pieces
- 5 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated, stems discarded, caps thinly sliced
- 5 slices of canned pineapple (or according to taste), cut into pieces
Sweet and sour sauce:
- 120 g. ketchup
- 120 g. water
- 120 g. rice wine vinegar (or cider vinegar)
- 120 g. brown sugar
- 2 tbsp. cornstarch or maitzena
- 1 1/2 c.c. salt
- 1 liter of vegetable oil for frying
Instructions:
- In a medium bowl, add the chicken pieces, soy sauce and baking soda, mix, cover with plastic wrap and set aside
- In a frying pan, heat two tablespoons of oil, add the garlic, cook and stir until fragrant, add the peppers and shiitake, cook and stir until tender as you like, remove from the pan and set aside
- Let’s make the sweet and sour sauce, in a small pan, add all the ingredients, stir to dissolve the sugar and starch, cook over medium heat until the sauce starts to thicken, the sauce should be syrupy but still a little liquid, be careful! Pour the sauce into a bowl to stop the cooking and set aside
- Now let’s get to work on the chicken, prepare your cooking surface: in a medium bowl whisk the 3 eggs, in another medium bowl pour the flour, prepare a dish or a large bowl with a few sheets of paper towels to blot the fried chicken, in a heavy bottomed pan or in an electric fryer heat your oil to 180° (if you don’t have a fryer, to control the right temperature, I dip a wooden spatula in the oil to the bottom of the pan, if the spatula starts bubbling nicely, it’s perfect)
- While the oil is heating, dip the chicken pieces in the egg, then on all sides in the flour, as soon as the oil is at the right temperature, fry in small batches until the chicken is golden and crispy, set aside in the prepared dish
- Reheat the sauce briefly, add the vegetables, pineapple and fried chicken, stir until the chicken is completely covered with the sauce, ready!
