Recipe - Sweet and Sour Chicken Bites

Not a Fakeaway post - because the point of those posts is to recreate, as near as I can, a dish that tastes like it has come from a Takeaway.   I've never been a huge fan of Sweet and Sour sauce, not the kind that you buy from supermarkets, or get in a Takeaway, so I'm not trying to recreate that.   Today, it's more Recipe Retry #4.   This is another dish I haven't made since moving to this new house 4 years ago (I still call it the 'new' house!) and I remember it converted many Sweet and Sour haters, not only myself and Mr G.  It's really tasty, surprisingly low in Propoints, and the beauty is you can alter the sauce to your own liking.  Like it sweeter?  With more of a tang?  No problem.   Adjust the sugar, vinegar, pineapple and tomato sauce levels.

The most obvious difference is - the colour of the dish.   Sweet and sour as I know it is unnaturally orange and very cloying, just tastes really artificial to me - all sweet and no sour.  As Peter Kay once said - 'Never eat anything luminous' ;-)  This dish will be much darker in colour, due to the ketchup and soy sauce.

A popular takeaway dish around here is Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls, battered chunks of chicken in the sauce.  Well, I'm not about to start battering and deep frying chicken (especially after last week's weight GAIN!) so I'm going to use LA Diner's Chicken Breast Bites in my dish - these are very good point wise too, and really tasty!

Ingredients (Serves 2):
250g frozen weight Chicken Breast Bites
½ tsp each garlic and ginger
Sliced mixed Peppers
Red onion, sliced
2 tinned Pineapple rings, cut into chunks, juice reserved
Salt and Pepper

Sauce
4 tbsp Rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Soy Sauce
3 tbsp Tomato Ketchup
2 tbsp Reserved Pineapple juice

I cooked the chicken pieces according to the pack instructions while I assembled the rest of the meal.

I heated the vinegar up gently and added the sugar, stirring until dissolved.  Then I added the soy sauce, ketchup and pineapple and stirred until combined.  It's not a very good picture, this actually looks darker than what it was.

 

In another pan I added the peppers, onions, spring onions, minced garlic and ginger, with just a little dash of rice vinegar, soy sauce and water.  Cook in the juices for 5 - 6 minutes.

 
Because there wasn't loads of sauce, I decided against pouring it over the veggies, it would have been swallowed up within seconds.  So I assembled the dish - rice, veggies, then the chicken bites on top, and the sweet and sour sauce spooned on top.

eSource pointed this recipe at 7 Propoints a portion.  I served this (cheated!) with a bag of Birds Eye Fusions Egg Fried Rice (7 Propoints) and a small jacket potato (3 Propoints).  After last night's (semi) disappointment, this was definitely more my cup of tea!