Sweet and sour chicken baked in one pot
This is a delicious sweet and sour chicken baked in one pot. Do you love this old family favourite? OMG you are going to think this new way to cook it is a keeper
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg chicken thighs skin on bone in | 3.3 lb
- 500 ml pineapple juice, unsweetened | 2 cups 3.3lb
- 250 ml rice wine vinegar | 1 cup
- 100 gm brown sugar | 3/4 cup
- 80 ml soy sauce, light | 4 Tbsp | gluten frree if required
- 1 Tbsp ginger, grated
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 100 ml tomato sauce | 1/2 cup
- 60 gm cornflour | 1/2 cup
- 1 whole eggwhite
- 1 large red capsicum, cut into large squares
- 1 large onion cut into very large dice
Instructions
- Set the oven to 190 C | 375 F. You will need a baking dish. I used a 32cm round oven proof frypan but any baking dish will work. it should be big enough that you can put all the chicken in one layer.
- Put the cornflour into a large bowl and add the chicken. Toss the chicken into the cornflour and roll it around to coat. Add the egg white and toss until the chicken and cornflour now looks like a thin batter. This will both thicken the sauce and make a nice coating on the chicken when it's baked. Set aside
- To make the sauce grate the ginger finely and crush the garlic. Add both to the baking dish along with the soy sauce, tomato sauce, sugar, pineapple juice, and rice vinegar. Stir together well. You could do this in a bowl and then pour it into the baking dish but why make more dishes?
- Add the roughly diced onion and capsicum (pepper), stir again. Put the chicken pieces on top of the sauce. I make sure you rub that chicken onto the sides of the bowl and get all the cornflour mix stuck to the sides onto that chicken. The chicken should be sitting above the sauce. Half in half out
- Put the dish into the oven. Bake for 35 minutes, before piecing the centre of the biggest piece with a knife or skewer to make sure it is cooked through. This of course will depend on the size pieces you have, your oven, and how spaced out the pieces are. The boneless chicken will not take as long again. Please check chicken, if still pink give it another 10 minutes.
- Take the tray out of the oven and turn each piece of chicken over in the sauce to coat and then bake again for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Serve with chopped cucumber, pineapple and coriander and rice of course!
Notes
You can make this sweet and sour with drumsticks, boneless thigh pieces or even a whole chicken. You can also make this with fish use a nice thick cut
You cook a pork belly and then finish it in this sauce before serving
You could add vegetables only and cook them in the sauce
So many ways to use this sweet and sour sauce
Do you like your sweet and sour with pineapple?. You can add fresh cut pineapple or canned pineapple about 2-300 gm.
If you can't get rice vinegar use 150ml white vinegar
To make this vegetarian use large chunky vegetables like cauliflower florets, whole mushrooms, broccoli chunks, zucchini thick-cut rounds red and green peppers and sliced firm tofu any other vegetables you may like. I also add a 1/4 cup of yeast flakes for flavour into the sauce. Stir everything around and then add the vegetables. The vegetables and tofu need to be dusted in the cornflour (in the recipe)and popped straight into the sauce. There no need to fry them. The cornflour helps thicken the sauce as they cook. Turn the vegetables and tofu over halfway through the baking time.
