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a simple real food recipe :: sweet and sour chicken and rice

Chinese night anyone?!

Back in the day when my husband and I first started dating, one of our favorite date nights was going out for Chinese. This was before being educated on the dangers of MSG and other crazy ingredients that some Chinese restaurants in the US use in their cooking. I still crave that crispy fried sweet and sour chicken dish I use to get EVERY time we would go to our favorite spot 😉

When we made the switch to real food, I spent years going without these favorite restaurant meals while my gut healed. A couple years ago, I started playing around with making my own sweet and sour sauce – it took me a good year to finally get it the way I liked it – the way I remembered it being in the restaurant! Even the jarred sweet and sour sauce that I grew up on at home was full of high fructose corn syrup and other preservatives and colorings, so making it from scratch was really my only option – and it doesn’t take long at all.

I hope you will give this a try! It will make your mouth water!

a simple real food recipe :: sweet and sour chicken and rice

Author: Renee - www.theSIMPLEmoms.com

Ingredients

1 ½ - 2 cups cooked chicken from your weekly roasted or crockpotted chicken
½ onion, sliced long
1 red pepper, sliced long
1 orange pepper, slicked long
2ish cups sugar snap peas
1 cup of juice from oranges or from jarred pineapple (I usually do orange and it takes 4 or 5 oranges)
¼ cup organic ketchup (watch ingredients – no HFCS)
¼ cup organic vinegar (rice vinegar or white wine vinegar work best)
1 ½ TB coconut aminos (this is in place of soy sauce – if you have access to FERMENTED soy sauce, you may use that. See kitchen tips for more details on both of these.)
1 TB honey
Pinches of red pepper flakes to taste
3 tsp arrowroot or organic corn starch mixed in a couple TB water to thicken
4 cups of cooked long grain white rice to serve over (if you are grain free this is so delicious just plain or you could serve over a baked potato)

Instructions

In a medium sauce pan bring the juice, ketchup, vinegar, coconut aminos, honey, and red pepper flakes to a boil and reduce to a simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
While the sauce is simmering, sauté your onion and snap peas with a few big pinches of sea salt in about 3 or 4 TB of butter or coconut oil for about 10 minutes and then add the peppers which don’t take as long to cook, for a few minutes.
When the sauce has simmered about 10 or so minutes, add the arrowroot to the sauce and bring up the heat to thicken – keep stirring.
Add the sauce and chicken to the pan with the veggies and combine and heat through.
Serve over the cooked rice if you wish.

Kitchen Tips:

Chop the veggies the night before. This really comes together super fast – you could even cook the rice the night before if you want. I just cook the rice while everything else is cooking – I love having 3 burners going at the same time! I feel like an Iron Chef! 😉
The sauce freezes WELL. I very often will double or triple the batch and freeze so I can have a super fast dinner come together. I did this right before I had my babies so I could have quick dinners! If you see oranges go on sale go for it!
You really could fry your chicken if you want – this version just goes faster for me but I do love a good fried chicken with my Chinese 😉 Just be sure you are frying in a friendly fat – lard, tallow, coconut oil, butter, etc. NOT canola, soy, peanut, vegetable, etc.
Read THIS and THIS on why soy is dangerous when it isn’t fermented. Coconut aminos taste just like soy sauce and is so much better for you. Fermented soy sauce is fine.
THIS is what the coconut aminos look like. It is basically aged coconut sap and is a great tasty alternative to soy sauce. Price compare with amazon and your health food store – I get it cheaper at my health food store most of the time.
HERE is what fermented soy sauce looks like.
Please be sure you are using organic corn starch to thicken if that is what you want to thicken with – you will be getting GMO’d corn otherwise. Arrowroot works well too.
Read THIS and THIS on why I have made the switch from brown rice to using a long grain white rice instead. HERE is what long grain white rice looks like.

YOUR TURN!
Do you love Chinese night?! Let me know how you like the sweet and sour!

This post was shared at Real Food Forager’s Fat Tuesday and The Polikva Family’s Family Table Tuesday!

April 18, 2013 By Renee

About Renee

the real food hippie :: renee is married to her superman and mama to her 3 busy bees. she loves soaking up the sun, real butter, and julia child. her passion is helping people take baby steps to raise a real food generation in this world of highly processed food – one with healed guts, functioning minds, and solid health. she also blogs at Raising Generation Nourished. Find more of Renee on twitter pinterest and Google+.