I wish that folks who don’t like to cook could come and spend a week with me! Sometimes I do make meals that take hours but sometimes, things go together so quickly that I amaze myself.
Last week when I was talking about tomatoes, a reader left a comment about Sweet & Sour Sauce that she cans. I remembered that I had done some of that last year using this recipe. I checked my pantry and found that I had only 2 jars left so over the weekend, I made two batches, which was 14 pints and tomorrow, I’ll probably make two more batches. That will give me 28 pints and I’ll share some with Chad and Nicole. It’s so nice to make it now while the tomatoes, peppers and onions are “free” in the garden.
Dinner
Most of the time, when I make Sweet & Sour Chicken, I plan it for a night or two after we’ve grilled something else and I put extra chicken breasts on the grill so all I have to do is take them out of the fridge, slice them up and pour sauce over them but today, I had to start with raw chicken. Tonight we had fried rice (from leftover rice), and okra from the garden.
These are the ingredients I began with for the Sweet & Sour Chicken, except I forgot to take the soy sauce out for the picutre.
Sweet & Sour Chicken
There are (clockwise beginning the back), the jar of sweet & sour sauce that I canned, the jar of leftover rice (I store leftovers in Mason jars because they go in the dishwasher), sliced and seasoned chicken, carrots (from the garden), eggs (5 little bantam eggs from our chickens), onions (from the garden), and diced ham (from the hog we bought from a friend). I would have added peas except I thought I had some in the freezer in the house and didn’t and I was too lazy to go back to the shop to get them, and green onions except I was too lazy to go to the garden and get them.
Chicken
The chicken was browned in a skillet and then transferred to a pot so I could use the skillet for the fried rice.
Chicken
The jar of canned sweet & sour sauce was poured over the chicken and it simmered while I cooked the rice and fried the okra.
Sweet & Sour Chicken
The eggs were beaten and allowed to cook in the skillet.
Eggs
The eggs were removed and set aside. The carrots were added to the skillet and cooked for a few minutes, then the onions and ham were added and allowed to cook for a few minutes, then the rice was added, then eggs were added and soy sauce was poured over everything. Yum!
Fried Rice
It took me longer to write this blog post than it did to cook dinner and it would have been even faster if I’d started with leftover grilled chicken! It was so good and so easy and a breeze to clean the kitchen tonight!
Dianne says
Looks yummy! Now, to get my ingredients together so I can make some….
Dottie N. says
Even though we’ve already eaten dinner, I sure could go for a helping of your sweet and sour chicken ;-).
Donna says
I want to come to your house for supper! Do you just water bath that sweet and sour sauce? That’s what it sounded like when I read the recipe but that seems almost too easy. Thanks for sharing.
Sherrill says
I would LOVE to come to your house for a week–learning at the feet of the master AND having a blast!! What could be better?! LOL
Glen in Louisiana says
I love sweet and sour chickens! There was a sidebar I couldn’t get off the blog and I could only read half of your words, but it looked very interesting.
Laura says
Thanks for the dinner idea! I’m always looking for new ways to prepare chicken and this is one I hadn’t thought of!
Gardenpat says
So glad my comments caused you to take inventory of your sweet and sour sauce still in your pantry! 😉 I had a #10 can of pineapple tidbits that I wanted to have in a more useable (less leftover waste) form. With just hubster and our 24 year old son at home, there’s no way we could polish off that can before it would go bad! It was enough for 5 batches! Our peppers are slower this year because our summer has green so much cooler, so I used some ziplocs of frozen green pepper chunks from last season and some diced tomatoes I canned last year! This way, my harvest this season will be rotated in with last season’s bounty used up! The onions were fresh from my garden! I got 32 pints and it only took about 4 hours from start to finish!
I had frozen 6 quart ziplocs of broccoli from my garden and while going through my fridge, found a partial bag of fresh broccoli from Sam’s Club that was left over from a quilting retreat I hosted last weekend. I blanched that & another 4 quart ziploc bags went into my freezer!
I am determined to bring our food waste down to as little as possible while stocking my food storage and, most importantly to me, living on our food storage!
Picked hot peppers today so it may be hot pepper mustard to can today! Thanks for your support and encouragement!
Bev Gunn says
Thanks for the link to the recipe….I now have a new blog to follow-very interesting and quite informative site! Going to try the sweet sour sauce as my one daughter just loves stuff like that and most days I am too lazy to make it. Next have to find a way to mass produce the stir-fry sauce (already have simplified by making in the microwave!)
Phyllis says
We are growing okra for the first time this year. I do not fix fried foods due to our health problems. I love okra and tomatoes or would love just steamed okra, but when I fix either, it is too slimy. When we had green beans, I would put okra on top and cook the last 15 -20 minutes (whole pods) and it was not slimy. Any clues on how to fix it. Think I am going to try roasting some tomorrow.