Sweet & Sour Chicken

Sweet & Sour chicken, Shrimp Fried Rice, Egg Drop Soup, Won ton Soup, Beef & Broccoli, Egg Rolls, General Tao's Chicken, Vegetable LoMein & my mom's Chicken & Snow peas are just a few Chinese dishes that we enjoy. Ordering take out is a special treat and can be very expensive. With the collection of cookbooks that I have and an array of recipes on line, we can have Chinese at home for a fraction of the cost of take out.  Plus, we get to decided what goes into our dish!!!! This dish is easy prep and we loved the way the sweet & sour played on each other. With Steamed brown or white rice and vegetables of choice, you have a pretty healthy meal. With the abundance of fresh produce this time of the year, you can have a wide variety of vegetable choices.  I usually have all ingredients on hand so this is an easy dinner item. This recipe fed our family of four with leftovers for lunch the next day. I plan on tripling the sauce the next time because my family loves extra sauce over their rice and vegetables. The dish calls for chicken breast, but I think that a mix of chicken breast and boneless chicken thighs would be a match. Well, I do because I love those thighs.... I prepared the chicken before work and topped with the sauce ingredients, placed in the fridge and brought it back out for about 15 minutes while oven was warming up. Dinner was ready in under 1 hour. You can even bake the rice right along side the chicken! Just Wonderful!!!! 

Psalm 119:103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. God's words are sweet to us.  It's meant to give us nourishment, just as the food we eat daily. If we are daily reading God's word we can experience His Sweetness every day. Good food is meant to be shared with family, friends and strangers along the way, so is God's word. When we are not eating the right foods, our bodies suffer, we become sour, and it's the same when we are not feeding our souls and we become sour to those around us. Take in God's spiritual food, it is sweet and share it with others by what you say & what you do! Sourness does not belong in our spiriutal diet!

Sweet & Sour Chicken-

Ingredients-

4-5 Boneless chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
2-3 eggs slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups cornstarch
sprinkle of salt & pepper over the cornstarch
oil for frying

Place beaten eggs in one bowl and the cornstarch in another. Drop chicken pieces in the egg and then roll in the cornstarch to cover and then on a cookie sheet. I like to do this all first before lightly frying.

Heat oil in dutch oven or stir fry pan. Lightly drop chicken pieces in oil and brown, they just have to get their coating slightly crisp, they do not have to be cooked. The chicken will finish cooking in the oven. Remove with slotted spoon and place in a 13 x 9 baking dish. ( I used my stir fry pan and used sesame oil to brown the chicken. They came out perfect).

Sauce Ingredients-

4 tablespoons ketchup
3/4  cup sugar
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic salt
 
Mix sauce ingredients and pour over the chicken. You can at this point cover and refrigerate and bake later. If baking right away. Pre-heat oven to 350 and bake the chicken for 45 minutes. Stirring every 15 minutes. The will become thick as it cooks.

Steam rice & vegetables of choice to serve with the chicken. To bake rice. I place just over 2 cups of rice in a buttered dish and add 4 cups hot chicken broth, cover and bake for 20 minutes. Gently mix and add 2 tablespoons butter. I freeze any leftover rice for future soups!

Eat Well, Sonya