sour chiken | sweet and sour chiken recipe tips

 sour chiken | sweet and sour chiken recipe tips 

sour chiken ,sweet and sour chiken recipe tips 

This is not your average stodgy sweet and sour chicken. This is a beautifully light and tangy Thai homestyle sweet and sour. So we have done prepared chicken on my channel previously . We did a Chinese version, but this is a homestyle Thai version. It's super light and fragrant.

 There's a few little sneaky vegetables in here that you might not think of - to put in a stir fry. But my mum does it! So it's legit. First off, we are going to go with some cucumber. That's right, we're going to cucumber in a stir fry. You all need to confide in me on this . It's soaks up the sauce beautifully. Still has a lovely crunch. Try it. And let me know if you like it! The important thing for me is that with stir fries you really need to get the chopping all down pack. The chopping makes a big difference. The size that you cut the vegetable and furthermore the manner in which you cut it .

 So with the cucumber, inside is very watery where the seeds are. I don't want that bit cause I don't want a watery stir fry. You have to simply cut and move your cucumber around . And then I'm going to cut off the seed part. Put that away. So you can see we've got our little pile of seeds here which we don't want. And now these other pieces, I'm just going to slice them a little smaller. And now pineapple. Now this is a little bit controversial. I know a lot of people don't like pineapple or fruit in their stir fry. That's ok. You can leave the pineapple out - it's an optional. 

But what isn't optional is that if that if you're going to use pineapple, it really need to be fresh. I find the tin pineapple is too sweet, it disintegrates. It's not good. So either go with new pineapple or none by any means. And then here we go with another non-conventional stir fry ingredient. But my mum always puts tomato in her sweet and sour. It's the way that I've always had it. So I love it. I simply need to cut this into decent wedges. Just going to put that over to the side here. And now for some capsicum. Again with the slicing technique on this capsicum.

 I'm just going to slice the sides off. Missing all of those seeds. And then I want some irregular pieces. I want each little piece to be a bit unique in shape. Similar size to your tomato, pineapple and cucumber. And now some onion. I like some wedges here. I find that when the wedges first hit the pan, they kind of get a nice little charrriness on the outside cause they're bigger clumps. And then they'll kind of separate as they're stir frying. And then our last bit of chopping is for some spring onion. So the pale part gets fairly finely chopped. And then for my lovely bright green parts, I like to have little batons of those. Pop the pale piece of your spring onion over with your onion .

 They'll go in together. And then these green parts, I'll save those  just to add at the end. And one final note on chopping and then I promise I will zip it about the chopping. In any case, you need your chicken pieces for this to be extremely little too. Similar size to the vegetables that you've chopped. I'm using chicken thigh because I'm a thigh and leg kind of girl. I like how juicy it stays in the stir fry. Yet, you can utilize chicken bosom too in the event that you like. And now for the stir fry sauce. It is so super simple.

 It almost belies belief that it will produce something really amazing and complex. But it will! Trust me. So we're going to start out with some fish sauce. And a lot of you guys have written in and said to me fish sauce that you buy is really strong, it has a strong flavour and smell. So can I suggest when you're buying your fish sauce. One, look at the ingredients. It really should only be fish, salt, maybe some water. You don't want any added sugar, any other weird sodium benzoate, or kind of ingredients you don't know what they are. 

Don't go for those ones. And also look for the colour. It should be a light colour, similar to this. Very clear. If it's really dark like soy sauce, kind of colour dark. Then it's probably a really old bottle which, it's still fine to use. It's just going to have a stronger flavour. So there you go. A couple of tips for buying fish sauce if you find it a little strong and intense.

 Fish sauce into my bowl. And I want some white vinegar. Just plain old white vinegar. And some sugar, and some cornstarch. I'm going to put the cornstarch straight into my sauce here rather than mixing with some water. Cause I don't want to add any extra liquid. Can just dissolve it into this. Ok and that's it. This is what your bench top should look like before you start to stir fry. Everything organized, all your vegetables chopped ready to go before you start cranking the heat.

 Here in the wok, we are going to do a couple of things that are going to help our stir fry maintain its intensity keep that meat really nice and juicy without everything stewing. I've got lots of little tips here. The first tip is get your wok really hot. If you don't have a wok, just a really large frying pan is good. If it's too small, then you'll find everything will stew and that's when you get a very insipid kind of stir fry.

So, large pan or wok. And I'm just waiting for that smoke. So now I'm going to add my oil. And just swirl that around a little. In goes my garlic. And straight away the onion and the spring onion. Toss that around. I want to quickly add in my chicken before that garlic burns. And then straight away spread all of that chicken out. Cause I want as much chicken coming into contact with the hot pan as possible. And now here is where we leave the chicken for a little bit to get a nice little bit of crust on the outside. Just a minute or so. 

Now I want to toss this through. And you can see just how much steam is escaping here, and that's liquid that's evaporating rather than liquid that's condensing down. Causing our meat to stew, and everything to become very insipid. One of the key things here when you're stir frying. What I'm looking for here is some of that nice colour in the chicken. A little bit char on that onion.  The chicken is almost cooked. So I'm going to go into my vegetables now. Capsicum first. Just toss that through a couple of times. And now the rest of our vegetables. Pile those in, And now things are really starting to look so colourful and delicious.

 I love this part,So just give these vegetables like half a minute. Toss them around a little bit. Just want to take some of that crunchy edge off the cucumber. I want a little bit of colour on our pineapple. Have a look here, you can see there's barely any liquid in the bottom of my pan because we've been able to let most of it evaporate out. Which has allowed us to brown our chicken and vegetables. rather than having them soaking in the liquid. Now here is where we want the liquid.

 Now we're going to add our stir fry sauce. And I really want to wait for this to bubble up, start to get nice and thick. Toss all of this together, keep that sauce bubbling. Until you get a really thick, glossy coating on everything in that pan. This is looking amazing. The tomato has broken down a little bit into the sauce and stained it Just a little bit red. 

Everything is looking glossy and beautiful. I'm going to add in my spring onion. And that's it. Time to serve it up. So there you go guys. A very simple stir fry which means all those little tips and techniques are really important. And they'll make a huge difference. And the cucumber - I can't wait for you guys to try the cucumber. Trust me, it's so good. Hear how it's a little bit crunchy still? It soaks up all the sauce. Even my mum will be happy with this one Mine's better though.