SWEET AND SOUR CHICKEN (serves 6)
SWEET and sour chicken is a staple on any Chinese takeaway menu – and it's easy to see why. But with this recipe you can make your own dish quicker than it can be delivered.
It's tangy and sweet, and works just as well with tender pork or chicken. The sauce is sticky and moreish, while the crispy batter should melt in your mouth.
This recipe also has oodles of child appeal and it's a great way to introduce youngsters to foreign food.
You can buy child-friendly chopsticks that are joined at the top, and which even very young children can use. They will have such fun using them that they will forget that they are eating vegetables!
This recipe is a firm favourite with Cosmo customers; we serve litres of the syrupy sauce which customers pour over mounds of steaming hot rice.
It looks like a complicated recipe, but you'll be rewarded with a delicious meal to wow everyone with.
INGREDIENTS
1kg chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
1 cup plain flour
Black pepper, ground ginger and garlic salt to season flour
200ml semi-skimmed milk
2 eggs
Vegetable oil
1 onion
1 green, 1 red, 1 yellow pepper, cut into ½ inch chunks
2 carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
1 can pineapple chunks in juice
For the sweet and sour sauce:
200ml pineapple juice (from the tin of chunks)
400ml water
100ml red wine vinegar
50g granulated sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp corn flour – mixed into cold water to make a thickener
METHOD
For the chicken:
1. Put a generous amount of oil into a small frying pan, and heat until it smokes.
2. While it's heating up, mix the eggs and milk together until combined. Put the seasoned flour in another shallow bowl. Dunk the chicken in the egg mix. Allow excess to drain off and then coat it thoroughly in the flour mix.
Practise using some chop sticks to keep the flour off your fingers!
3. Drop the chicken into the hot oil and fry them until they are golden brown. Turn as necessary to cook evenly on all sides. When golden brown, remove to paper towel covered plate to drain. Repeat until all chicken pieces are cooked. Set aside until assembly.
For the sauce:
1. Put the pineapple and water in a saucepan and heat over a low flame. Add the sugar slowly and make sure to keep stirring.
2. When the sugar has dissolved, add the vinegar and the lemon juice – but make sure to keep stirring!
3. Keep stirring while you add the corn flour thickener and bring to the boil. Stir constantly until it's mixed in and thickened.
Finish it all off:
1. Add a tbsp of vegetable oil to a large frying pan or wok and heat.
2. Add the peppers, onions and carrots to the pan, stirring frequently. Cook until the onions start to brown.
3. Add the sauce and cook until the vegetables are tender – around 10 minutes – and the sauce thickens and coats the vegetables.
4. Add the pineapple and chicken chunks, mixing it all together.
Most home-made sweet and sour sauces are made with brown sugar, giving the sauce a distinctive coffee colour.
This recipe produces a red sweet and sour sauce that looks just like the Chinese restaurant takeaway dish – but we think that it tastes a lot better.
Try it and see how easy it is to make tasty oriental-style food at home. Serve with hot rice – plain boiled rice, or egg fried rice for an extra special treat. And don't forget those prawn crackers!