Sweet and sour chicken

Trust us, once you have made this dish you won’t want to buy store bought, or takeaway, sweet and sour chicken again. It is so good!

Although it contains chilli sauce this dish isn’t actually that spicy as the orange juice evens out any heat. The amchoor powder is readily available at most ethnic supermarkets.

Ingredients

• 4 chicken breasts, cubed
• Garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp amchoor (dried mango powder)
• Cornflour
• Rapeseed oil
• 100g sugar
• 125ml vinegar
• 4 tbsp ketchup
• 2 tbsp hot sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 65ml orange juice
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.  Line a baking tray with baking paper or foil (not essential but takes the elbow grease out of washing up). 

Place your chicken pieces on a plate and sprinkle with garlic salt (to taste) and the amchoor powder and set aside. 

Heat your oil in a large frying pan (about 1” deep), keep at a medium heat whilst you roll your chicken pieces in the cornflour (shake off any excess) and then fry for 4-5 minutes until lightly browned all over. Once cooked remove from the pan and leave to one side.

Mix together the sugar, vinegar, hot sauce, ketchup, soy sauce and orange juice, season with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper in a saucepan.  Heat this on a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Lay the chicken out on the baking tray and pour over the sauce.  Bake this in the oven for an hour (turning every 20 minutes) until browned and crispy and serve, it’s as simple as that.

Mark’s Top Tip

To turn this into chilli chicken, chop up some fresh chillies and scatter over the chicken after you have poured on the sauce. This will give the dish a real kick.