Sweet & Sour Pork and Fried Rice

One of my goals for my Bucketlist 2013 is to catch up and continue my blogs..... so after the rave reviews on tonight's supper, I will commence my first welcome back post.



In making March's menu plan, I decided since wrestling season was over, there would be less eating out on weekends and we could get back to some of the special meals we used to do for weekend suppers. One of our favorites is Chinese. Lately we have been going to our favorite Chinese buffets, however money is tight this spring and the freezer is fairly full of roasts and burger. With this in mind I added a variety of homemade Chinese meals to our Sunday menus.

First up... Sweet and Sour Pork

If you have ever been to my Pinterest profile you will know I have around 300 boards highly organized down to the type of ingredient for some meals. On my Asian Meals board you will find this recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken & Fried Rice by Life as a Lofthouse blogger.

Fried Rice

3 cups cooked white rice (day old or leftover rice works best!)

3 tbs sesame oil

1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)

1 small onion, chopped

2 tsp minced garlic

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/4 cup soy sauce

      On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the peas/carrots mix, onion and garlic. Stir fry until tender. Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated! **You could really play around with this rice too! Try adding some diced ham, or green onion :) Yum!

I have tried multiple recipes for fried rice including those on seasoning packets. None have compared to this one. It actually turned out, for one! I didn't have any sesame oil, which I'm sure would have made it even better, but the grape seed oil from WildTree was a very good substitute. I also didn't have any 'just peas and carrots mix', so I improvised with mixed veggies.

 

 

 

 

 

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts

salt + pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbs ketchup

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs. Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.

For the Sweet and Sour Chicken, I used a pork roast, thawed and largely cubed. It was nice and tender and juicy and breaded nicely just the same. To feed a family of 6 it took the entire roast, so I doubled the breading and sauce recipes. The sauce was neither too bold or too bland, one of the best we have had and I'm thinking I will make a separate batch to keep in the fridge for dipping.

To finish the meal off, we added some hot and sour soup. This was not homemade, we used our last packet of our favorite brand. They no loner sell it in our area. The last place we found it was the Kearney, Ne WalMart, one of the last places I want to spend my time on a trip 'back home'. If you think the Rapid WalMart is bad, Kearney possibly is worse!

 

 

 

 

 

Absolutely every aspect of this meal was delicious. A definite KEEPER!!!!