After making sweet and sour chicken for the 1st time with ketchup, I thought to myself, I bet the restaurants don’t use store-bought ketchup, so exactly what’s their secret? I told you before I have an unhealthy level of obsession!
So I decided to make an elevated, admittedly more complicated sweet and sour chicken recipe, with everything from scratch. While making the base of the sweet and sour sauce, it dawned on me that I was essentially making homemade ketchup. Flashing light-bulb moment!
5 skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 cup of potato flour
1 onion (chopped), 1 onion (minced)
8 cloves of garlic (minced)
4 slices of ginger (minced)
2 bell peppers, whatever color you prefer (deseeded and chopped into 3cm pieces)
1 cup pineapple
1 canned pineapple with syrup
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/3 white vinegar
1/4 pineapple syrup
1/3 brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
salt and pepper
1 tbsp cornflour mixed with 1 tbsp of pineapple syrup for thickening (if needed)
For the fried chicken
5 skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 minced onion
5-6 cloves minced garlic
4 slices minced ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce
dashes of salt and pepper
did say that this is an elevated version from my previous recipe. That’s to say there are more steps to achieving greatness! The fried chicken that come out from the recipe is so good that it can be a standalone dish, so it’s really worth making it when you are in the mood.
Put the onion, garlic, ginger and soy sauce in a food processor and grind it to a paste in a food processor. Season the chicken with a bit of salt and pepper. Add the paste to the chicken chunks and mix well. Let the chicken dance in the marinate in the fridge for a few hours.
When you are ready to make the dish, add 1/2 cup of potato flour to the marinated chicken and mix well. Let it sit for a couple of minutes to absorb all the marinate. It will look a bit gooey. For this dish, I am deep-frying the chicken for that extra crunch. Heat a pan with plenty of oil (an inch minimum in order to submerge the chicken). Put 1/2 cup of potato flour on a plate and dredge the chicken chunk each by each in the potato flour. Fry the chicken in the hot oil, adding one piece at a time with space in between, or they will stick together! Turn the pieces after 2-3 minutes and fry for another 2 minutes. Fish them out and put them on a rack or on a paper towel. Continue until you fry all the chicken pieces.
Sweet and Sour Chicken, making the magic happen
In another pan, add some vegetable oil and fry the chopped onion and 2 cloves of minced garlic until translucent. Season with salt and pepper along the way. Add the bell peppers and stir fry for another 5 minutes. All the pineapple chunks and fry for 2 minutes. Proudly pour the sweet and sour sauce that you made earlier to the pan and stir well. If the sauce is too thin, add the cornflour mixture to the pan to thicken the sauce. Quickly toss the fried chicken to the pan to coat the chicken in the sauce. Don’t over do this step so the chicken will stay crunchy.
Serve with fluffy rice.
Make a mess. One kitchen at a time.
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