Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken Recipe - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What makes baked chicken taste better? ›

Marinate, Marinate, Marinate!

If you're making a stir fry or chicken bake, tenderizing your chicken prior to marinating makes it even more tender and juicy. Simply cut the chicken breast into bite size pieces, coat evenly with about one teaspoon of baking soda per pound of chicken, and let sit for 20 minutes.

You're Overcooking Them

This is likely the most common mistake cooks make when it comes to chicken breasts.

Sweet and Sour Chicken Ingredients

For the sauce: water, pineapple juice from a can, white sugar, white vinegar, and orange food coloring. For the batter: cornstarch, self-rising flour, vegetable oil, an egg, salt, and white pepper.

Use Baking Soda

That prevents proteins from squeezing together as tightly during cooking, leading to really tender, moist chicken.

The best way to bake chicken breasts is the oven is at 400 F. Simply drizzle some olive oil in the bottom of your baking dish, season your skinless chicken breasts generously and add a pat of butter on top of each chicken breast.

Overcooking leads to dry, tough, sawdusty meat with nearly no flavor. High doneness temperature for food safety. Salmonella is the food safety enemy in chicken that dies only at higher temperatures. But cooking chicken breast to an instant thermal-kill doneness temperature will cause it to dry out excessively.

If you marinate the chicken with yogurt and spices a day before cooking, then your chicken will be soft, flavorful, and tender.

Make sure your chicken breast is well-seasoned before adding it to the pan. Cook each side evenly until brown. Once done, bake the chicken breast in a pre-heated oven until juices run clear. The crispy skin from the sear will help keep juices intact while baking cooks the insides through without drying them out.

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.

Is sweet and sour chicken from Chinese healthy? ›

Nutrition Facts

There are 1765 calories in a 1 order (706.000g) serving size of Restaurant, Chinese, sweet and sour chicken. The calorie breakdown is 46% fat, 38% carbs, and 16% protein.

Preheat the Oven

Bonus: baking chicken breasts in the oven doesn't require babysitting. No flipping or turning.

Brines and marinades help tenderize the meat by bringing more moisture in the protein. With that extra moisture, you lose less when you cook.

Just sprinkling a little salt on top of your chicken right before cooking it will only season the surface. But seasoning the chicken with salt well ahead of time or brining it in a salt-water solution will draw salt deep into the meat, resulting in a very tasty piece of chicken.

Add a touch of spice to your chicken breast by combining paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic and olive oil to create a paste. Then cover your chicken breast with the paste and pat down to secure.

Just because the chicken is already cooked doesn't mean it can't benefit from a rub. Before reheating, make a custom blend of your favorite spices like paprika, cayenne, onion or garlic powder. Mix in dried herbs or a bit of sugar for beautiful caramelization, then sprinkle it evenly over the skin.

Brining your chicken is a foolproof way to not only add flavour to your roast but also to ensure you don't overcook the meat. Essentially a mix of salt, sugar and water, we love adding herbs, garlic or whole spices such as fennel and cumin to flavour the brine.

Herbs and lemon

Stuff the cavity with halved garlic cloves, lemon, and herbs (like thyme, sage, and rosemary); rub the chicken with butter or olive oil, and season generously with salt. You're good to go.