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Here is an easy sweet and sour chicken recipe you can use to make a quick and easy dinner at home! This sweet and sour chicken is a quick and inexpensive dinner recipe and kids and families love it! It’s much cheaper than eating out and you can make dinner for $5 for the entire family! You can find this recipe in volume 1 of our Dining On A Dime Cookbook.
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Sweet and Sour Sauce Recipe
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Yield:1 1/4 cups
Ingredients
Units
1/4cup brown sugar, packed 1 Tbsp. flour or cornstarch 2 Tbsp. white vinegar 2 Tbsp. soy sauce 3/4cup ketchup 1/3cup reserved pineapple juice 1 can pineapple chunks (optional)
Instructions
Mix the brown sugar and flour in a saucepan.
Add the rest of the ingredients except the pineapple.
Heat and stir until it boils and thickens.
Great with pork or chicken. Makes 1 1/4 cups of sweet and sour sauce.
3–4 chicken breasts cut into small pieces 1 1/2cups cornstarch 3 eggs
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325°.
Cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces.
Season with salt and pepper.
Place the cornstarch in one bowl.
Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.
Dip the chicken into the cornstarch and then dip into the eggs. Place on a baking sheet.*
Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
Pour 1/2 the sweet and sour sauce over the chicken in the last 15 minutes of baking and finish baking. Use remaining sweet and sour sauce to dip chicken when serving.
Notes
If you like, for a little extra flavor and color, you can also lightly saute your choice of veggies like bell peppers, chunks of white onions and carrots and add them to the sweet and sour chicken at the end, pouring a little extra sauce over the top when the veggies are added.I don’t usually add them because the kids don’t like them, but the veggies can definitely add a little pizazz!
*If you prefer, instead of baking you can fry these in a little oil until cooked through.
This easy sweet and sour chicken recipe is from volume 1 of our cookbook:
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Reader Interactions
Comments
Grace Brunelle
Looks great! I can not wait to bite into this!! Blessings, grace in vt
Yummy… l love your cookbook use it often and love your Videos and your family your so down to earth great every Day ideas. Use your other books too
Reply
April
I would like to make this but daughter has an egg allergy. Could I just leave that part of the recipe out and it be ok?
Reply
Jill
You could maybe try it without the egg. What I would do is just try one piece and fry it up and see what happens. If you use egg substitute for her then you could maybe use that too.
Reply
Cheri newman
Can you just do the sweet and sour sauce and put it on rice and not use meat
Reply
Jill
Yes you can Cheri
Reply
JoAnn Agnello
Can I replace the Chicken with Pork? My grandson loves Sweet and Sour Pork, instead.
Reply
Jill
Yes you can
Reply
Julia
Making this tonight! Got my cookbook in today! I’m so excited! I’m serving it with chow mein from a ramen pack with frozen mixed veggies. Can’t wait!
Reply
Lori
Chicken did not look like picture!!! That is what I’m looking for!!!!
Reply
Jill
There are thousands of people in the world who all cook differently using different pans, stoves and methods of doing things so the chances of yours looking like the picture are slim especially if you are making a recipe for the first time. Trust me my first pie recipe when I made it did not look like the recipe at all. Even the oil to cook things can make the color different. If it tastes good I would not worry about it being “picture perfect” – I use the same makeup as the models in magazines but I can assure I don’t look like them and if you would see them in person they don’t look like that either. I can’t believe that with all that is going on in the world that someone has nothing better to do than to worry about and get upset about is your chicken not looking like the picture.
Reply
Tacy
Lol lol what a great answer!
Reply
Mary White
Is that correct: dip in cornstarch FIRST, then egg, then bake?
I’m trying to figure out how that would not make a baked eggy mess..
I absolutely love sweet and sour chicken and want to make this so bad!! I just want to make sure I’m reading that correctly.
Reply
Jill
Yes Mary it is. Many recipes call for you to dip something in flour first then the egg when you deep fat fry or in this case baking. It helps the egg (and sometimes egg and milk mix) to adhere to the item better.
Reply
Leanne Johnson
When is the best time to add pineapple chunks? I’m going to make this tonight for my family. Can’t wait to try it.
Reply
Jill
Leanne you can add the chunks right before serving – long enough to just warm them up.
While sweet and sour can be found in diverse forms in China, the American version builds upon the simple mixture of sugar, vinegar, and spices with the addition of fruit juice—most commonly pineapple—and ketchup, giving the sauce both its red hue and uniquely Western flavor.
Here's what you'll need to make homemade sweet and sour chicken: For the sauce: water, pineapple juice from a can, white sugar, white vinegar, and orange food coloring. For the batter: cornstarch, self-rising flour, vegetable oil, an egg, salt, and white pepper.
Sweet and sour sauce tastes just like it sounds. A little bit sweet and a little bit sour at the same time. You will also have notes from whatever you flavour it with. The sweet and sour tastes can be made with a simple sugar and vinegar mix.
Lemon or lime juice are the two most common substitutes for white vinegar. You can also use rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar or malt vinegar but the taste of your sauce might be a tad different. Soy Sauce – I used low sodium. Ketchup – I used store bought.
The Chinese term for “sweet and sour” is “糖醋” (sugar-vinegar) - this is a rather common flavor in daily Chinese cooking in (many areas of) China. Sweet and sour chicken would be “糖醋鸡” (sugar-vinegar chicken).
Sweet and sour chicken has a tangy, sweet, and slightly sour taste due to the combination of vinegar, sugar, and ketchup in the sauce. On the other hand, orange chicken has a distinct citrusy, sweet, and slightly spicy flavor from the use of orange juice and sometimes chili flakes in the sauce.
Coat the chicken in the cornflour and add to the pan. Stir-fry for four minutes until very lightly coloured on all sides. Add the pineapple and sweet and sour sauce to the pan with the chicken and bring to a simmer over a medium heat.
All-Purpose Flour. Yep, that's right — all-purpose flour is a very stable thickener. ...
Arrowroot Powder. If you happen to have this starch on hand, you're in luck: It has the same thickening power as cornstarch, and it creates a beautiful, shiny sauce. ...
Could I use flour instead of cornstarch? Yes, but you may need more flour than what the recipe calls for in cornstarch. The cornstarch is just used to thicken the sauce; flour will also thicken the sauce, just not as well.
I'm sure they mix a sweet sauce with soy and vinegar. You could easily look this up on line- how to make your own sweet & sour. The Chinese do not buy it. They know how to make it.
Our sweet and sour dishes are either 'Cantonese style' (which is the same as 'Hong Kong Style') or Sweet and Sour 'Balls' (thick battered). Our Cantonese style is cooked with the sauce, onions, peppers and pineapple.Whereas the Sweet and sour Chicken or King Prawns balls come with a separate pot of sauce.
Add bell peppers and sauté with chicken until beginning to soften. Step 3Meanwhile, whisk together apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ketchup and garlic. Pour sauce into the skillet. Simmer together with the meat for 5 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened slightly.
General Tso's chicken and sweet and sour chicken are completely different dishes. Starting with the sauce, General Tso's chicken is a sweet, spicy, and slightly tangy while sweet and sour sauce is often served on the side and is just sweet and tangy.
As we've already mentioned, sweet and sour dishes do actually exist in China. (Unlike other Chinese American dishes like General Tso's Chicken or Chop Suey.) However, it is a dish that has been heavily Americanized as well. Many sweet and sour sauces here in the U.S. are much sweeter than the Chinese version.
How to Make Sweet and Sour Sauce: In a saucepan, combine 1/2 cup ketchup, 1 tsp soy sauce, 1/3 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 cup white sugar until combined. In a separate cup, whisk 3/4 cup cold water (or pineapple juice) with 4 Tbsp cornstarch until well blended.
There are 13.4 grams of carbs in a 2-tablespoon serving of sweet and sour sauce, 7 grams of those carbs come from sugar. The carbohydrates found in sweet and sour sauce are simple carbs, and it has a glycemic index of 70. The carbs are likely coming from ingredients including tomato sauce, ketchup, and added sugar.
Introduction: My name is Arielle Torp, I am a comfortable, kind, zealous, lovely, jolly, colorful, adventurous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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