Sweet & Sour Sauce

Last summer I made and canned Sweet & Sour Sauce. It truly is about the best thing I’ve ever canned. One pint is a bit too much for the two of us and half a pint is a bit not enough. Last year I canned the pints first, then switched to half pints but this year, I canned it in pints.  This morning I put up 18 pints of it. 

Sweet & Sour Sauce

Some of our pork chops are packed three to a package and some are packaged four to a package. I think I’ll have sweet & sour chicken one night and use a bit over half a jar. The next night I’ll do something with pork chops and save one of the chops from a 4 pack package and the next day for lunch, I’ll use the rest of the sweet & sour sauce, the remaining pork chop, leftover rice and have sweet & sour pork for lunch, when we typically eat less than we eat at dinner. How’s that for being frugal?  🙂

The Sweet & Sour Sauce is great for this time of year when there are a few tomatoes in the garden and they’re pretty scraggly, the bell peppers are tiny and weird shaped and if I look hard, I can find onions that got overlooked when I was pulling them so basically, except for the canned pineapple, I’m making the sauce from what mostly would otherwise be tossed out or left in the garden to rot. Last summer I think I made the equivalent of about 40 pints of sauce. I gave some of it to Chad and Nicole and had planned to share some of this with them since she told me they had just used their last jar but after chopping peppers, I realized there were some hot ones mixed in and Nicole does not like hot. I’ll have to see how hot this batch is and maybe I can make another batch if this one is too hot for her.

For anyone who wants to try their hand at canning, this would be an excellent choice. The ingredients aren’t expensive so if you mess up (which you won’t), it isn’t like you’ll have to toss out half a pay check’s worth of food. Also, it’s processed in a water bath so you don’t have to deal with a pressure canner.

We really like this stuff. Mostly, I’ll take out one chicken breast, slice it very thinly, brown it, dump a jar of sauce over it, heat it up and serve it over rice. Not only is it an amazingly quick meal but we both like it a lot.