Extra Sweet and Super Sour chicken recipe

Monday, 18 March 2013

This recipe is a 'win' for taste
but a 'fail' for health

The recipe is as follows:

Chicken Breading:
3-5 chicken breast
salt and pepper
1 cup cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup canola oil


Rinse chicken, trim off fat or extras and then cut into 1 inch cubes. season with salt and pepper. Dip chicken into cornstarch and coat all the way and then into eggs. Heat oil in large skillet. Cook chicken until browned. Place in baking dish. 3 chicken breasts can be in a 9x9 but 5 chicken breasts fits better in a 9x13.

Sauce:
3/4 cups sugar
4 Tablespoons ketchup
1/2 cup white distilled vinegar
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Whisk until smooth. Then pour evenly over chicken. Turn chicken so the sauce gets on both sides and then put in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. turn chicken and then cook for 15 more minutes.

recipe courtesy of: http://madeitateitlovedit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/sweet-and-sour-chicken.html

It's super straight foward and doesn't really require anything at all, I was excited to try it because I'd made sweet and sour chicken before that was just super bland, with a thin lifeless sauce- The picture sold it to me:

So I followed the recipe as best as I could, but my errors were this:
Thinking that beating one egg instead of two would be enough to coat the chicken - it's not and all the breadcrumb crusting falls off if you don't have enough egg

Not having a skillet so shoving all the chicken together in a little sauce pan- the chicken merges into a big chicken lump and the cornflour coating ends up mostly on the bottom of the pan

Halving the sugar in this recipe- I began to pour out the sugar measurement and suddenly realised that this would all be going into me- I freaked out a little bit so poured half back in the bag which then made for a rather thin sauce... which you see me try to resolve later... Next time I will use brown sugar and maybe get away with using half since it would make a thicker sauce.



I bought an onion for the recipe too to chop up and add in, and that worked a treat.

You can see how watery the sauce is, and the onions added in
 15 minutes before the end of cooking time i was frustrated that the sauce wasn't especially sticky so I decided to thicken it up with a bit more sugar, then flour... well I had a bit of a flour-tastrophe and accidentally poured in more sugar than i anticipated, so much more that the sauce got sticky... a bit too sticky! Thicker than wallpaper paste, so I boiled a kettle and added hot water slowly in an attempt to thin it out a little, the result looks nothing like the picture, but I've given up trying to make mine look like the picture anyway...
My goodness, it tasted fantastic, despite the thick sauce, despite the fact that the chicken isn't all crumbed. The recipe really does taste like the local chinese restaurant, it was pure indulgence and next to no nutritional value whatsoever.

When I make this again (and I will, it's in my top 3 favourite things to make) I willl...
Skip the coating in cornflour step, it's less healthy and a bit faffy for nothing
Use 1/4 cup less vinegar, the vinegar was amazing at adding the 'sour' but I think I overmeasured
Add more onions and red and green peppers to give it a bit more nutritional value
Add flour again if need be despite using brown sugar but be more careful to add it slowly

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