Heather: Sweet-and-Sour Chicken with Pineapple
November 26, 1999

1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves 3 tablespoons vegatable oil (I use cooking spray instead) 1 large onion, cut into thin wedges 1 large green bell pepper, cut into 3/4 inch squares 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon corn starch 1 (20-ounce) can unsweetened pineapple chunks, juice reserved 2 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons ketchup 1 large tomato, cut into eighths Hot cooked rice

  1. Cut chicken into strips or 1-inch squares. In a wok (I use an electric skillet, but any skillet will work), heat 1 tablespoon oil until very hot. Add onion and green pepper and stir-fry over high heat until vegetables are crisp-tender, 2-3 minutes. Remove to a dish and set aside.
  2. Heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil until very hot. Add chicken pieces and stir-fry over high heat until chicken is white throughout, 5-7 minutes.
  3. Mix vinegar and cornstarch; combine with juice drained from pineapple, brown sugar, and ketchup. Add to wok. Cook, stirring constantly until sauce clears, boils, and thickens, 1 to 2 minutes. Return onions and green peppers to skillet. Stir in pineapple chunks. Cover and cook 2 minutes longer, until heated through. Stir in tomato. Season to taste. Serve with hot cooked rice.

Notes: We don't care for the tomato thrown in, so we just leave it out. Mike once complained that there was too much pineapple, but I don't think that can ever be the case, so I still put the whole can in and he can take more veggies and chicken if he wants. I usually use 3 chicken breast halves, which I think is probably less than the 1 1/2 pounds called for. We get a dinner out of it with usually one serving left for a lunch (but maybe we're just pigs when it comes to dinner). I also serve this with some potstickers from the frozen foods section of the grocery store.



Heidi Thurtle, November 30 Well, the recipe came across my computer just when I was wondering what to do for dinner. We had most of the ingredients (I just needed to pick up pineapple) It was very good, but not something we would eat regularly as it was very sweet It will be added into the once a month dinner rotation. Heidi =)


Jodi Graham Wood, December 2 I made the Sweet and Sour Chicken last night (all I had to buy was the green pepper!) and it was a big success! I'll be having leftovers for lunch today. It was easy to do and tasted great! Jodi


Barbara, December 13 I finally made this recipe today (I say 'finally' because we bought chicken a *week* ago to do this recipe, but it didn't find its way onto our plates until this afternoon.) First, the deletions: I didn't use any of the vegetables...I dont' like onion, DH isn't a huge fan, and neither of us like peppers. So, I just left them out completely. I didn't substitute any of the other ingredients - which was one of the reasons it took us sooo long to make it, DH kept forgetting to buy the required ingredients - it took three trips to the store to get every thing! We liked it, as a quick substitute for my aunt's more time intensive chicken-n-pineapple dish (With hers, the chicken is made into strips, rolled into balls, dipped in flour, then cooked -- the sauce and pineapple are then added and the whole thing gets heated in the oven, and simmers. Longer process, but with very similar ingredients - although no peppers or onion in hers). I often make sweet and sour sauces from scratch, similar to the one in this recipe, so it was both a familiar concept and a different result..... Overall : Yum! --Barbara


JulieD3964, December 18 Matt and I tried this recipe on Thursday night. It's definitely very simple and it reminds me of a much more difficult recipe I cook involving dredging the chicken in flour before cooking which makes a terrible mess in the kitchen. We used an All-Clad 3 quart saute pan instead of a wok with no problems. We did include the tomato at the last minute and I ended up eating all of that part since Matt won't touch them. Neither of us ate any of the onion but it does add flavor so we wouldn't leave it out in the future. I can see why there were complaint about too much pineapple in the recipe. It's not that there's too much and we wouldn't cut back on it. It's that the recipe is too sweet! In the future, we'd definitely add more "tang" to it and raise the "sour" factor a notch. Aside from that, great recipe that we'll be adding into rotation! Julie


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