Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

Yes this sweet and sour chicken recipe is baked, and it is also sauteed. The oven time is almost an hour, but you can do something else while it bakes, so the recipe is versatile. It gets a two thumbs up for flavor, and now to the nutritional content. YOW we are talking A LOT of sugar here. I think it would be safe to say that most take out sweet and sour chicken has just as much sugar, and probably way more salt and fat. So if you would like to make some very tasty chicken, and you don't mind the fact that your dessert is in the middle of your main course, this is the dish for you! It is beautiful to look at as well, although I did not garnish my photos. Just sayin'. By the way, next blog I'm going to shoot off about 20 photos of each and every step that is so in vogue with bloggers. What's with that? That is so last week already, c'mon everyone.

I give credit to damndelicious.net (see below) for this recipe, I only upped the veggie factor, and didn't follow the instructions very well!

Ingredients
1 lb chicken breast meat (I used tenders) cut into 1" chunks
1/2 c. cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten, in a medium size bowl

vegetable oil for sauteing.

3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. cider vinegar
1/4 c. ketchup (I used salt free)
1 TBS soy sauce (I used Kikkoman low sodium soy sauce)
I was supposed to add 1/2 tsp garlic powder, but forgot to, so I sauteed garlic with my veggie mix (see below).
Dredge the chicken in the cornstarch. I put all the chicken in a bowl with the cornstarch and stirred it up well.

Heat about 1/4 c. vegetable oil in a large skillet over med-high heat. The original recipe calls for dipping the chicken pieces one at a time in the beaten egg and placing in the oil. The chicken is cooked just until it is brown on the outside 3 or 4 minutes, and it won't be done on the inside yet.  Then the chicken is placed in a lightly oiled 9x11 baking pan. I quickly found myself tossing 4 or more pieces of chicken into the egg, and lifting them out, letting the extra egg drip back into the bowl before putting the chicken in the oil. I separated the chicken pieces from each other when they were ready to flip over (after about 2 minutes). When I got to the last 10 pieces of chicken I just threw it all into the beaten egg left in the bowl, and took the pieces out one at a time to put in the oil. I couldn't see any difference between the pieces when they went into the oven.

Before the chicken goes in the oven, the sauce ingredients are well mixed, and poured over all the chicken pieces. The chicken is baked at 325º, taken out every 15 minutes for a gentle stir-up and total baking time = 55 minutes, or until the sauce is thick and chicken is well browned.

The original recipe did not call for any vegetables. I feel a cumpulsion to add vegetables to any and every thing I eat, so while the chicken was baking I stir fried onion and sweet peppers in sesame oil with some added pressed garlic and chili flakes. Then, I don't know why, I also added some fresh pineapple chunks aka more sugar...

We had brown rice, in case you are wondering! Here is the link to the original recipe, which I believe is more organized than my version, and it contains nutritional facts as well.http://damndelicious.net/2014/01/18/baked-sweet-sour-chicken/