Sweet and sour chicken is one of the common dishes you can find in the Chinese restaurants around Belgium and the Netherlands. As a foodie from Taiwan, it is difficult to find authentic sweet and sour chicken here. It is either too saucy, or the taste is just not right. If I crave the traditional classic flavor, I will roll up my sleeve and do it myself.
This dish is especially friendly for kids and family, crispy fried chicken coated with sweet and sour flavor, you just cannot resist it. In this recipe, I don’t use too much oil to fry the chicken, it is like pan-fried method, to keep healthy. The combination of vegetables is the traditional way my mom will do, you can choose any vegetables which work for you. Don’t know how to start? Don’t worry, I will guide you step by step, let’s start the journey!
Ingredients
Method
- You can follow this cooking flow:
A : Prepare Ingredients
- Prepare the main ingredients
A.1 : Chicken Marinate
- Prepare chicken breast, first cut in the middle, then cut against the grain, this way will make sure that the chicken absorb the maximum sauce and stay tender later.
- Cut the chicken breast into 1 – 1.5 cm thickness
- Put the already cut chicken breast into a container, and according to the ratio of marinated sauce, put the ingredients in and mix with chicken well, then put into fridge, let it soak around 30 minutes.
A.2 : Vegetable Cut
- Cut the vegetables into cube around 2 – 3 cm square size, we need big chunks. Then set aside for later use.
A.3 : Sweet and Sour Sauce Prepare
- Take a bowl, according to the ratio⭐ from sweet and sour sauce show above, put the ingredients together and mix well. Set aside.
B : Fry the chicken
- So now, the chicken already soaked around 30 minutes, take out the container and pour out some of the marinated sauce, we do not want the chicken too watery before we fry it.
- Then put 1 or 2 full eggs into the container then mix well. The egg will act as glue for our fry coating.
- Make an arrangement of container, bowl of sweet potato flour and an extra plat like the photo show. Then we can start coating our chicken with sweet potato flour ⭐.
- After coat the chicken, you want the layer absorb the moisture, it will become slightly brown, but then very sticky.
- If it gets too sticky, you can apply second layer of sweet potato flour.
- Time to heat up the pan and start fry chicken. You will repeat the fry action several times, so let's arrange the pan, chicken and the plat with oil filter/grill in the proper position.
- Put oil into the pan/wok around 1cm high, heat it until 200 ℃, this is a crucial step, this will guarantee you get a crispy out layer.
- Put the first batch of the chicken in, don't over load the pan, we can do several times. When the chicken just in, the temperature will drop so we need to let the fire stay at medium high.
- One side fry around 2 minutes, then flip to another side to fry around 2 minutes as well, until it gets golden crispy. One batch is around 4 – 5 minutes. Repeat the steps until all the chickens are fried.
- Then put the chicken already fried aside, wait for later use.
C : Cook the Vegetables
- We want to use the same pan/wok, take out some of the remaining oil until 1 tbsp left in the pan, while the pan still heated, first put the garlic in, quick stir until the aroma come out.
- Then put the onion in, stir pan fry around 3 minutes
- Put the bell peppers in, stir it and then put the lid on to let it shimmer with medium low heat. This will need around 10 minutes, we want to keep a bit of crunchiness for the bell pepper, and the onion a bit transparent soft but not taste spicy.
D : All together like one big family
- Time to put all the things together!
- First we put the pineapple chucks in (Oops, in the photo I forgot this), then we put the sweet and sour sauce, cook around 2 minutes to let the sauce heat up and mix well.
- The last step is put the fried chicken in, then turn off the heat.
- Stir it well, let every angle of chicken gets the coating of the sauce.
- And voila! The sweet and sour chicken is done!
Notes
⭐ If you want to lower the sweetness, try to make the ratio for the ingredients: 5 4 3 1, so increase one tbsp of soy sauce.
⭐ Sweet potato flour is crucial to make a crispy coating for chicken, highly recommended, but it is more difficult to find in usual supermarket in Belgium, you will need to go to Asian supermarket. If need for a replacement, you can use “chapelure (in french)”, which you can find easily in usual supermarket.
