Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

This was a really easy recipe that the kids loved helping out with.  Alyssa handled the chicken (I did the cutting) since she likes messy stuff and Brayden made the sweet and sour sauce.  Gabe made the rice and divided the chicken into servings.  It was fun to be in the kitchen all together.  I found that I did not need as large of a baking dish as the recipe calls for.  I used the next size down.  Heck if I know what size that actually is.  It's square though.  (Have I mentioned that I know very little about cooking?!) 

It was tasty, easy and fun to make.  The kids did not like it.  Which kind of surprised me, since sweet and sour chicken is a dish they love when we eat at a Chinese restaurant.  It didn't look the same though, so of course, that means it's disgusting.  *sigh*  I must admit that I was hesitant to taste a sweet and sour sauce made out of ketchup, but it was surprisingly good.  And apparently it's not that abnormal to use ketchup in fast sweet and sour recipes.  Who knew?  Not me, that's for sure.



Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken - serves 8

The chicken coating:
3 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 tablespoon ketchup
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic salt

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Heat 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet.

2. Rinse chicken and cut into cubes.  Season with salt and pepper.

3. Dip chicken into cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs. 

4. Cook chicken in large skillet until brown, but not cooked through.

5. Place chicken in a 9 x 13 greased baking dish.

6.  Mix sweet and sour ingredients together and pour evenly over chicken.

7.  Bake for one hour, turning the chicken every 20 minutes. 

Serve over rice or alone.