Easy Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken Recipe! | Wok Wednesdays

hey guys Jeremy here from school of what I'm going to show you how to make a classic sweet and sour chicken one of the top most ordered dishes in the country [Music] classic sweet-and-sour chicken really simple stuff but you've got to get the deep frying process right and start by stretching my bed onion and pepper straight round probably won't use a whole pepper hot pepper will do and then nice sort of dices of pepper same sized onion like keep it good sweet sour making sure that it's batter is nice and dry and crispy whole point of this is a little bit of onion a little bit of pepper just to bring out that color in the sweet and sour everything needs to be the same size that cooks at the same time pineapple chunks if you want to go classic sweet and sour feel like you're having your restaurant or takeaway dish at home now on to the most important part the meat look you can do this with chicken pork or even prawns or squid anything will do tofu is even great most importantly you want to get a dry dusty white batter I'll show you that now I've got chicken thigh here classically in Chinese cooking we tend to use the thigh the stir-fries or deep-frying a little bit of fat in there just has an extra moisture extra tasty that's the way we like it good chunks of chicken so again similar sort of dice sizes to the onion pepper chunks make sure every piece of chicken is similar to the size again so that it cooks at the right amount of time when you start to deep-fry so every stir-fry or deep-frying process in Chinese King will have a marinade and then a sauce that goes on the top to marinade your chicken or pork or whatever you're cooking for this sweet-and-sour we've got some very classic ingredients like soy sauce sesame oil and a pinch of sugar I always say if you remember those three things like soy sauce sesame oil pinch of sugar you guaranteed to make your food taste Chinese we're going straight into the chicken we've got light soy sauce and we just need roughly a tablespoon of light soy sauce we can get a teaspoon or so of sesame oil make sure it's pure sesame oil and you'll get that real sort of nutty flavor and then your sugar a chef's pinch of sugar roughly half a teaspoon we like to think that everything has its own sweetness you kind of accentuate that sweetness that pinch of sugar well give it a good mix and then we're gonna add your egg to it as well the egg is there to help bind that corn flour it is very dry dusty white batter this is what makes a really crispy finish but without that sort of greasy sort of almost bad fish and chips batter around the chicken egg now this is the most important part of making a proper sweet-and-sour homestyle it's corn flour or potato starch you need a lot of it to make sure that every piece of chicken comes out nice and separate and doesn't want to stick together your corn flour just go straight over the top and I'm gonna use the whole bowl of water here people using my book certainly messages about this and saying something's wrong why do you need to 300 grams of water well this is why you want to make sure you sort of massage that cornflour in take a little time with this a couple of minutes really sort of separate out each piece of chicken and pork me or even hopefully whatever you're cooking into your seen salad can see now I haven't got pieces of chicken stuck together moreover every piece is separate and dry and dusty white really important for a good homestyle sweet-and-sour pork or chicken you really want to go in depth of corn flour there is a little trick if you apparently you filled a whole swimming pool with corn flour you could run across that swimming pool but you wouldn't have to walk across it and that's supposedly a two thixotropic entity so anyway the cornflower that's done nicely every piece nice and separate all I have to do now is make up my sweet and sour sauce classically and really old days sweet and sour would have been just dark soy sauce a little bit of something sour some vinegar and some sugar and that's it but sweet and sour as we know it it's much more red and in is really bad takeaways bright red but for me that red comes from your secret ingredient ketchup make sure you use a good ketchup of course so we've got ketchup some sugar and some rice vinegar and essentially same amount of ketchup vinegar and sugar that makes a great sweet-and-sour sauce I put a little dash of dark soy sauce into there as well just the sort of deep in that color make people know it's cooked at home same amount of ketchup vinegar and sugar you want to use one spoon less washing-up start with your sugar first so one two three four spoons of sugar this is definitely not a healthy dish but hey it tastes good vinegar next so I don't have to worry about washing again one two three it's kind of slipping on the spoon so for there okay and then your ketchup again four spoons one two three perfect size around a kin look at that give that a good mix through this sugar will melt obviously in the wok so don't worry about it melting or to the melting through whilst you're mixing it might still be a little bit grainy you can see the brightness of that red is currently the same color red is my bowl so I just put a little dash of dark soy sauce which is like caramelized soy sauce texture it'll completely change that color red into more of a maroon red color for me slightly more palatable next up deep frying now a lot of people are a little bit scared of deep frying at home we are a school after all so here's some safety tips first of all never fill your oil more than halfway up the wok or pan whatever you're using never more than halfway up secondly it's got to be a high heating oil so vegetable oil corn oil sunflower oil just not olive oil or sesame oil they've got very low smoking point wooden chopsticks cool implements are really useful with deep frying when I pop it into cold oil nothing will happen but on hot oil it will fit up straightaway you see that fizzing your oil is hot enough it should be at around 180 degrees C on that fish no fizzing yet definitely not hot enough so I've got my fizz and ready to start frying next tip when you're frying these sort of spiders we called a spider's webs are really great because they can pick up things very easily or a slotted spoon will do the job but the difference between a spider a Chinese sort of skimmer and a slotted spoon is that we've got very very small surface area on this skimmer so we won't pick up any excess oil that's the biggest difference next up when you're actually frying don't put too much meat or tofu whatever you're cooking into the fryer at one time if you overfill that oil with your meat then it will lose a lot of heat and you won't get a good deep fry from it I'm gonna make sure that there's enough space for that that chicken to really fry up straightaway and seal nicely good to do this in batches have some kitchen towel on a baking tray ready need a kitchen towel some baking so it's good to have some kitchen towel and a baking tray ready so when it is cooked and absorb all that excess oil you see here now I've got that nice sort of crisp outer edge from that very light corn flour batter [Music] golden brown that's the color you're looking for good shake I think continue cooking however much chicken you've got when sweet-and-sour is being cooked from we're kids very difficult to have much sweet sound on the plate when actually got to dinnertime but we just dig into it like this it's great already fried chicken right right so my chickens fried nice and crispy it's still hot ready to go so I'm gonna pop that onto my wok clock you can see now I've got my onions my pepper some chunks of pineapple if you wish my sweet and sour sauce that will bubble up and caramelize very quickly and then lastly is deep fried chicken that we'll just toss into that sweet and sour sauce three or four time to finish off the dish so on to the finishing it's a quick stir fry essentially very very quick high key is what you need to get your walk on a really high key and add a little oil [Music] and with this type of stir-frying you don't really need to know too much about the walk other than high key and how to flick it when you flick your walk it's a long push forward and a quick flick backwards outside of that just stirring through is all you need smoking hot oil the first ingredient goes in your onion fold that through nicely break up any pieces [Music] yeah it's like charred fish on it you can see it's got a lot of dry smoke there so practice your walk tough at this point long push forward quick flip back now bring all that smoke up here rather than in the what make sure you get your extractor on next up your peppers continue moving that around [Music] pineapples [Music] just cooking out the grassiness of those veg you don't want to overcook them keep them nice and crunchy now you can see I've barely got any oil in that wok at all I'm gonna add a very small drizzle of oil just before my sauce goes in this sauce is gonna go in on a really high heat [Music] don't waste any of that ketchup Nick you can see vigorously boiling once that sauce is vigorously boiling all the way through bring your veg into it your crispy chicken oh hello your crispy chicken is going to go straight in at this point and I can smell that vinegar coming off the walk straight in and this is when I would recommend two hands lifting it through once two three four or five like this and then switch your hob off sweet and sour chicken ready straight out you can see leader cameraman rolling over this you wanna throw my [Music] of course if you want some steamed rice on the side of you in a garnish now a little bit of greens nice I'll head over to our garden shall I do a recipe says picked coriander literally pick the coriander leaves it's nice and simple do the sheffy thing crowd sounds always makes you look or chef like you can see how beautiful sweet and sour looks it's got that red but a little - to that dark so it's just deep into color makes it a little bit more authentic sweet sour time to taste crispy hopefully I'm quite happy for the cameras to keep rolling on this [Music] well it really simple quick cooking got to keep it crispy not greasy sweet-and-sour chicken like this recipe tell us what you want us to cook next in the comments below don't forget to subscribe subscribe subscribe don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell [Music]

Channel: School of Wok

Views: 1,811,553

Rating: 4.8549709 out of 5

Keywords: easy sweet and sour chicken recipe, sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour chicken recipe, sweet and sour, deep fried chicken, crispy chicken, school of wok, sweet sour chicken, how to make sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour pork, school of wok sweet and sour, sweet n sour chicken, chicken sweet and sour recipe, chinese sweet and sour chicken, wok wednesday, the best sweet and sour chicken recipe, chinese recipes for dinner, sweet and sour sauce recipe easy

Id: FTTlx8J5xUM

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017