Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

I’ll admit it: I love sweet and sour chicken. As much as I cringe to think of standard takeout fare representing true Chinese food (which is wonderfully varied and embraces many different spices, flavors, meats, vegetables and cooking styles), it is also something I enjoy. Sometimes, I just get a hankering for a carton of sweet and sour chicken, and nothing else will do. I guess it’s akin to a Mexican food aficionado relishing the occasional Del Taco fix.

Anyway, I was intrigued by this pin last week — it’s for a baked sweet and sour chicken recipe. I loved the recipe’s simplicity, as well as the fact that the chicken wasn’t deep-fried. After a friend vouched for how good the recipe is, I decided to give it a whirl. Guys, it is really good! It tastes just like takeout, except it’s not as greasy or heavy. The only thing I regret is using chicken thigh meat instead of chicken breast, as the recipe called for — I only deviated from the recipe because I happened to have some boneless thigh fillets to use up, but no chicken breast. I think the dryness of chicken breast is actually a good thing for this recipe; it would help the coating stick on better. Mine kind of slid around a bit. But, even so, the boys gobbled it all up. I served it with steamed rice and sauteed baby bok choy. Yum! If you’re a fan of sweet and sour chicken, I encourage you to make this (slightly) healthier version.

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

Ingredients

For the chicken and coating:

• 3-4 boneless chicken breasts
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup canola oil

For the sweet and sour sauce:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons ketchup
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cut the chicken breasts into cubes, then season with salt and pepper. Coat the chicken with the cornstarch (I put the cornstarch into a gallon ziploc bag, then put in the chicken pieces and shook it all together to coat the chicken), then dip the starched chicken pieces into the eggs.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, then cook the chicken until it’s browned, but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9×13 greased baking dish. Mix all of the sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk, and then pour evenly over the chicken.

Whisked sweet and sour sauce

Put the baking dish into the oven and bake for one hour. During the hour, turn the chicken pieces every 15 minutes. Rather than turning the individual pieces of chicken, I just used a wooden spoon to stir up the chicken every 15 minutes, making sure most of them turned. After an hour, remove from the oven and serve!

This goes really well with steamed rice and baby bok choy