Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between mandarin chicken and sweet and sour chicken? ›

Basically, the sauce is what distinguishes one flavor from the others, so when making orange chicken, the sauce base is orange juice, with lemon, lemonade, pineapple, pineapple juice, and sweet and sour is tomato sauce or juice and vinegar and sugar or honey.

Sweet and Sour Chicken Ingredients

For the batter: cornstarch, self-rising flour, vegetable oil, an egg, salt, and white pepper. Chicken: Cut eight boneless, skinless chicken breast halves into 1-inch cubes for this sweet and sour chicken recipe.

Taste the sauce and add more brown sugar or vinegar to suit your tastes, if you'd like. Serve hot with steamed white or brown rice.

The discrepancy is likely due to the fact that while sweet and sour chicken aptly contains slightly more sugar than General Tso's, the latter contains way more protein, so despite being a bit more calorically dense, it's actually the healthier choice.

“It might seem counterintuitive to marinate before boiling, but the velveting marinade tenderizes the meat, keeps it moist, and adds flavor. The meat ends up juicy and flavorful, a result you don't get with a standard blanching process.”

While sweet and sour can be found in diverse forms in China, the American version builds upon the simple mixture of sugar, vinegar, and spices with the addition of fruit juice—most commonly pineapple—and ketchup, giving the sauce both its red hue and uniquely Western flavor.

Chinese cooking uses cornstarch for frying to yield a light yet crisp crust. It's a much better choice than all-purpose flour, which can be heavy and take too long to crisp up, resulting in over-cooked or oil-logged fried foods.

In China, the sauces are traditionally made by mixing sugar or honey with a sour liquid such as rice vinegar or soy sauce and spices such as ginger and cloves.

Sweet and sour is particularly popular in westernised Cantonese cuisine and may be found all over the world commonly with pork or chicken. Several provinces in China produce various dishes that claim to be the ancestor including a traditional Jiangsu dish called “pork in a sugar and vinegar sauce”.

What is a interesting fact about sweet and sour chicken? ›

The original recipe was Shanghainese and used black vinegar. It's not meant to be orange, but black. But somewhere along the way, ketchup replaced the vinegar and it turned orange in the UK. Now that dish is called Sweet and Sour Chicken—Hong Kong style.

I've listed out their main difference below to make it a little more clear. Sweet and sour chicken: The two are super similar. The main difference is that General Tso sauce has more ginger flavor, as well as a little more heat from the hot sauce or chili flakes.

The origin of sweet and sour chicken was in the 18th century or even earlier from China. It spread to the United States in the early 20th century after the Chinese migrant gold miners and railroad workers turned to cookery as trades.

Fresh ginger and some orange marmalade sprang to mind. Think of it as a base, add fresh ginger and soft brown sugar, then use it with stir fry pork. If you've got an opened jar from last year, bin it.

Storage Instructions

To store, place the sweet and sour chicken into airtight containers and place them in the fridge for up to 4 days and in the freezer for up to 4 months.

Honey Sesame Chicken is one of the sweeter chicken dishes in Chinese cuisine. In short, Orange Chicken is subtly sweet with a citrusy taste, while Sweet and Sour Chicken is sweeter and tangier. No Chinese takeout is complete without a delicious side of rice– try out my favorite fluffy basmati rice recipe here!

The chicken itself is also different, as orange chicken is made with dark meat chicken ( chicken thighs) and sweet and sour chicken is made with chicken breasts and fried in a batter that yields a puffy and airy crust.

Mandarin orange fruits are sweet to taste and can be eaten as whole or squeezed to make juice.