Spicy Sweet and Sour Chicken

Thank you Bobby Flay for this wonderful recipe!  I didn't have all the ingredients his recipe called for, so I had to do it a little differently.  I changed a few things too, and it was F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!  This beats any bottled sauce or dry packet you find in the grocery store.  Bonus?  No MSG!  You can read the reviews and recipe here.  A friend at church gave me a bunch of bell peppers (We won't go into how poor of a green thumb I have nor how I have killed our garden 3 years in a row.), and I knew with the pineapple I had in the pantry I had to combine the two for Chinese cuisine.

Spicy Sweet and Sour Chicken

1 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (I used Marukan)

1/4 soy sauce

All the juice from 1 20 oz can of sliced pineapple

1 cup of granulated sugar

2 jalapenos chopped (I removed the membranes and seeds from only 1 jalapeno)

2 green peppers

3 peeled and sliced carrots

1 cup all purpose flour

Salt and pepper

3 Chicken Breasts cut into bite size pieces

Canola oil

Cooked Jasmine Rice (or any kind of rice you like)
1 Paint scraper (If you are a little clumsy in the kitchen like me, your sauce will boil over onto the stove.)

In a 2 qt pot, add vinegars, soy sauce, pineapple juice, sugar, and jalapenos.  Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a slow boil.  Cook until it is reduced by half.  Stir occasionally.  This will take anywhere from 20-30 mins. Once the sauce is done, set it aside and off the burner.

In the meantime (keep your eye on that sauce or you will be using a paint scraper), place flour, salt, and pepper into a ziploc or brown bag.  Add chicken and toss to coat.  In a large skillet, add some canola oil and heat over med-high heat.  (I used between a 6 and 7 on my dial on the stove.)  You want the oil hot enough to fry the chicken, but you don't want to burn it.  Fry chicken until cooked.  

Place chicken on a paper towel.  Add more oil, if needed, to saute the vegetables.  Saute for just a few minutes.  You will want a little bite left in the veggies and not soft and mushy.

Holding a fine mesh strainer over the skillet, dump the sauce in the strainer.  Add the chicken to the sauce and vegetable mixture.  Top rice with meat and vegetables.  Add some canned pineapple slices to the top.  Enjoy!

Optional:  Make the sauce first before doing anything else.  I am too impatient to do that, and I don't mind using a paint scraper. ;)