Sweet and Sour Chicken

I love the sweet and sour sauce from a local Chinese restaurant in my area called ABC Mandarin and have been in search for a copycat recipe. I've made several different sweet and sour sauces now and haven't quite found it, but this one was really good. I found this recipe on Blog Chef and made a few slight changes. I like using brown sugar in sweet and sour sauce and this one called for white sugar. I made the sauce as directed but felt it was a little more sour than sweet so I added about 1/4 c brown sugar and I thought it was better. Next time I'll try using just brown sugar and none of the white. Then I changed the preparation process a little. I wanted the flavor from the onion and green pepper to get in the sauce so I let it simmer together. The end result was delicious. I also used a tip from Real Mom Kitchen and made it with popcorn chicken which made this a simple meal to prepare. If you want to bread and fry your chicken I 'm sure it would be even better.

Recipe:

cooked rice

chicken (use deep fried recipe or popcorn chicken)

2 onions cut into 1" chunks

1 green pepper cut into 1" chunks

1 can pineapple chunks (reserve juice)

sweet and sour sauce

1/2 c vinegar

1/3 c sugar (original recipe)

(I added 1/4 brown sugar and will only use brown sugar in future)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c orange juice

1/4 c pineapple juice

1/4 c ketchup

2 Tbsp cornstarch with 1/8 c pineapple juice (thickener)

I added some red food coloring

Deep fried chicken breasts

6 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into 1" cubes

(you can use less chicken if you buy huge chicken breasts like I do)

flour

4 egg yolks

2 Tbsp soy sauce

oil

Mix egg yolk and soy sauce with a little water. Roll chicken in flour, egg, and then flour again. Deep fry in oil 2-3 min., drain on paper towels.

This is how I made it. First start cooking your rice. I then fried my popcorn chicken in a little oil and drained the excess when it was done. Meanwhile, I mixed together all sauce ingredients in a sauce pan and brought it to a boil. I let it simmer 5-10 minutes while I cut up vegetables and fried the chicken. Mix together the cornstarch and juice and then thicken the sweet and sour sauce with it. I added a little red food coloring to make it look better. In a very large frying pan or wok stir fry the vegetables with a little oil for a couple minutes. You want the vegetables to be crisp. Add the pineapple chunks. Add in the sauce and let it simmer with the vegetables for around 15 min. for good flavor. Serve rice, with the chicken on top, and then the sauce with veggies over it all.