How To Make Sweet And Sour Chicken
Sweet and sour chicken is a delicious and wildly popular dish found in most Chinese restaurants. Asian food instructor Chef VanRoo will show you a step by step easy way to make sweet and sour chicken.
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You will need
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Step 1:
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Prepare The Chicken
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Start by slicing the chicken into one inch cubes and placing the cubes into a clean bowl. Now add a half cup (64 g) of corn starch into the bowl and thoroughly coat the chicken cubes. The corn starch acts as a sealing agent, keeping the chicken moist on the inside during the frying.
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Step 2:
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Oil Blanch The Chicken
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Now oil blanch the chicken cubes, which essentially means deep-frying for a very brief time. Place the chicken cubes in a few inches of pre-heated vegetable oil in a wok or large skillet. The oil should be between 325o - 350o (163o- 177o C). You will know when the oil is hot enough when you start to see smoke or little squiggly lines in the oil.
Take care not to overcrowd the chicken when placing in the wok. Oil blanching is intended only to seal in the chicken's moisture, not to fully cook the chicken. So when finished, the chicken is still raw inside. You will know when the chicken is done when it turns a golden brown, which will take between 30 and 60 seconds. Upon removing from the oil, drain the chicken on a paper towel and repeat the process with the remaining chicken.
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Step 3:
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Prepare The Vegetables
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Take your green peppers and seed it by either using your knife to cut out the stem or by placing three fingers on the stem and pushing down hard. In either method, you want to remove the pepper's stem and seeds. Also, remove the white ribs of the green peppers as they have a bitter flavor. Cut the green peppers into one inch cubes. Now dice the pineapple and a small to medium sized onion into similar sized cubes.
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Step 4:
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Stir Fry
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After first pre-heating your wok until it starts to smoke, add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil around the sides of the wok. When the oil is hot, add the cut onions, green peppers, and pineapple to the wok. Next, pour in your sauce ingredients starting with your vinegar, sugar, ketchup and the sesame oil. Stir all this around for at least a minute then add the oil-blanched chicken to the mix and let cook for a couple of minutes to thoroughly cook, stirring occasionally.
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Step 5:
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Thicken The Sauce
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Mix together five tablespoons of water and two tablespoons of corn starch in a small bowl with your finger. Now add this slurry to the ingredients cooking in the wok, stirring constantly so that this slurry mixture will not clump. The slurry will thicken the sauce.