Sweet - it's the best I make.

Seeing as I'm enjoying COD Modern Warfare 2 so much I celebrated by cooking sweet and sour chicken.
I share with you the best recipe yet for sweet and sour, it's taken years to find it and it's the only one I use now.
I forget where I found it so apologies to whoever was decent enough to put it on the web, the secret is NOT to use pineapple juice, apparently this is an American twist on sweet and sour and although this has Tomato sauce (Ketchup) in it I presume it's to save making a tomato base for it, you realize anyway that Ketchup has all the same ingredients in anyway.

Ingredients.

Sauce - Enough for 3 - 4 adults, makes 400ml.
100ml sugar (just measure white sugar until it reaches the 100ml mark)
100ml Tomato sauce (I use cheap tomato sauce i.e Tesco/Asda own brand)
100ml White Vinegar
100ml water

A GOOD squeeze of tomato puree, probably 1/4 of a tube, depends on your taste.
Some cornflour (mixed with water), a couple of tea spoons should do but more will make a thicker sauce.

For the Chicken batter - Mix to your liking, we like it thick (we make about 250ml but depends on the consistency you want).
About 5 table spoons of plain flour
1 table spoon of cornflour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Cold water to mix - mix until it forms a thick coating batter, if you don't like the batter heavy then use more water.

If you like a very crisp batter then use less flour but substitute with cornflour, i.e half and half with cornflour, the corn flour will provide a firm "bite" to the batter.
You can use all cornflour but the batter is very firm and not how we prefer it as it tastes "dry".
A bit of experimentation will let you pick a batter you prefer, if you want a "bread like" batter then and add one egg, this will produce a thick batter which forms a fluffy dough center and crisp outer coating, if you find your batter is not crisp on the outside then add more cornflour next time you make it.

Chicken - About 500g of chicken, trim it so any nasty bits are removed but do NOT dice it up at this stage, we use chicken breast.

Other items.
1 medium saucepan (about 2 litre) with simmering water
1 small saucepan (about 1 litre) to make the sauce in.
Pan for deep frying, we use a large frying pan with about 1 inch of sunflour oil.
Hungry mouths.

Making the Sweet and Sour.

Mix the batter until it is at the consistency you like ( a tip here is you can drop some in the hot oil to test the batter, coat a mushroom for example and test fry it, if the batter needs adjustment then do it before adding the chicken).

Place the chicken in the simmering water and poach for 15-20 mins until cooked.
Remove the chicken and allow to cool (if your in a hurry then cool under running cold water)
Once cool cut the chicken into pieces suitable for deep frying (about 1cm cube).

In the small pan add the sugar, tomato sauce, vinegar and water - gently bring to a simmer whilst stirring all the time to ensure the sugar dissolves.
Reduce heat and cook for about 10 minutes to allow the vinegar to reduce it's intensity.
Add tomato puree, stir well and taste, if needed add sugar etc to balance, a tip here is if the sauce is sweet enough but the vinegar is still a little strong then add a bit more puree, this balances the vinegar but it's best to do nothing and let it cook out for about 15-20 mins, the amounts here work fine.

Let the sauce simmer for about 20 mins in total, you find there is a point the strength of the vinegar suddenly changes, a quick taste will tell you it's right, you should get a sharp bite of vinegar then sweetness from the sugar and the tomato.
Sometimes we add a tablespoon of honey as well but it's fine without it, a point to note here is you want the sauce to be quite strong, when you add the cornflour in a bit the flavors mellow quite a bit.

Keep the sauce on a low heat so it's nice and warm - I add the cornflour just before serving.

Take your diced (cooked) chicken and coat in the batter, your looking for the fat to be hot enough to cook the batter in about 2 minutes, remember the chicken is already cooked so your after quick cooking time but enough to cook the batter through if you make a bread type.

Drop several pieces at a time but don't over load the pan, cook until brown and crispy, remove and drain.

To finish the sauce, make sure it's simmering i.e just at a low boil, stir well while adding cornflour and water, the sauce will change colour to pink rather than deep red, stir briskly to ensure the cornflour does not clump up, if it does then pass through a sieve and continue.
Add cornflour until the sauce is the consistency you require, you will also find adding the cornflour further reduces the intensity of the sauce so you need to balance thickness with flavour, we like ours so it sticks to the chicken and hardly drips off .... mmmmmm.

Depending on your personal taste you can either put the sauce in a serving bowl and add the chicken (I think this works best if you make the bread type batter with egg in it) or we prefer to serve the chicken in a side bowl and you dip it in the warm thick sauce yourself.

It's taken me years and years to find this recipe, it's amazing how much you can adapt the sauce or batter to your liking but still retain a very close match to the original.
We like it so much we can't help but use any remaining batter on mushrooms, onion rings etc it's far too good to waste !

Try it and I'm sure you will like it, I no longer buy packet or ready made sauce, this one takes only a few minutes to make and costs virtually nothing, once you try it I'm sure you won't go back to packet sauces either.
If you need more sauce just remember to use EQUAL quantities of sugar, vinegar, sauce and water, then use puree to taste.

Get cooking ...