Zspider wrote:

> I'm wanting to try sweet and sour chicken. I've collected
> several recipes to work from but would appreciate your recipes
> and suggestions. There are so many ways to fix it. It looks
> like recipes use brown sugar and others don't. Also, I'm
> toying with the idea of actually just making the sweet and
> sour stuff separate from the chicken and then just pouring
> it over it in the end. Is that good or bad? I'm going to
> use boneless chicken breast, so I thought I'd just cut it
> thin, batter it, and roast it in the oven.


Don't bother with the oven, cook the chicken very quickly on the stovetop,
e.g. stir - fry. Boneless chicken breast is notorious for very quickly
becoming dry and stringy, so don't overcook it!

Glad you brought this up because I'm making s&s chicken this Friday, I'm
having a few friends over to help do some holiday decorating. I'll have
fried rice (or "lice" as Sheldon calls it) and some egg rolls, too.

I'll be brining my chicken for a day or so, one of the ingredients of my
brine is a packet of Knorr tamarind soup base (it's from the Philippines),
gives a nice sour taste. For a similar taste effect you can use a citrus
juice, grapefruit is good...

I'm making the sauce separately, and I'll be using pineapple juice as the
"sweet", it's a recipe from the 1975 version of the _Joy Of Cooking_, there
are many others, Arri's in this thread is a good basic one...

The pineapple chunks will be added with the other vegetables at the end of
the cooking...

For a garnish with the chix I'll be stir - frying some garlic and some
crushed peanuts...


--
Best
Greg