Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

Yes, it is another Pinterest recipe. I have been craving PF Changs. And we actually have gift cards to go there. But it is a little bit of a drive, so we haven't gotten that way in a while. So when I saw a recipe for BAKED sweet and sour chicken (with a fried rice recipe on the same page), I was ready to cook.

Except then life got busy, and this kept getting pushed to the side.

Today I had in-service. The kids stayed home with Mark. There was no homework to mess with. The chores had been taken care of throughout the day. So it was a good night to try something new. And I happened to have all of the ingredients for this. Perfect. :)

This was fun to make. Especially when hubby came in and helped. I love cooking together. (Not that this was complicated and needed both of us, but I never turn down a helping hand :)

The chicken itself doesn't take long but it does require attention.

The end result though? Hubby thought it was BETTER than PF Changs. And we ended up with NO chicken leftovers. The kids devoured it. Bummer for me since I usually take leftovers for lunch. There is some rice left anyway...

Anyway, here is the recipe.

Ingredients:
3-4 boneless chicken breasts (of course, I rarely use breasts...I used tenderloins)

salt and pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs beaten

1/4 cup canola oil (I used a "smart balance" blend of canola, soy, and olive oils)

For the sauce:
3/4 cup sugar

4 tbsp ketchup

1/2 cup vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt (I didn't have any garlic salt so I used garlic powder)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325.

Rinse the chicken and then cut into cubes. (I can never get cubes, so mine was more like small chunks :)

Season with salt and pepper to taste. I just put the chicken in a gallon size ziplock, then I added a little sea salt and freshly ground peppercorn and shook the bag to distribute it.

Dip the chicken into the cornstarch. I just added the cup of cornstarch to the bag. Then I closed the bag and shook away.

Dip the covered chicken into the eggs.

Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the chicken until browned...NOT cooked through.

We just had a little assembly line. I had the bag of chicken/cornstarch, the bowl of beaten eggs, the skillet, then the 9 x 13 glass baking dish ("greased" or in my case, sprayed with cooking spray).

We used tongs to remove the chicken from the bag, dipped it into the eggs, put it into the skillet, then moved it to the baking dish once browned.

It worked well.

Next, mix the sweet and sour sauce ingredients together.

Pour over the chicken.

Bake the chicken for one hour. Turn the chicken every 15 minutes.

I was tempted to skip the "turning" of the chicken but I am glad I did. The sauce would get really thick. I am pretty sure if I hadn't turned the chicken, it would have burned. I just set the timer and turned it in between working on the fried rice (recipe coming soon).

Delicious.

Really, it was.

The sauce was delicious.

And the chicken. Oh yum.

Like I said, there were no leftovers!

Reba