Sweet and Sour Chicken and Fried Rice

I found these recipes for sweet and sour chicken and vegetable fried rice on Pinterest yesterday, and they looked so good that I had to try them. My daughter loves Chinese food, and the end results were so delicious that I scored lots of mom points with this dinner. I nearly asked her if I was “momtastic or momtacular.”

I tried two Pinterest recipes this weekend; one was a bomb so I was hesitant to try these recipes. I must say that the cooking process–dipping the chicken bits into cornstarch and then beaten egg and pan frying it was time consuming and created big messes on my counter tops, stove, and fingers. So some process improvement was in order. Halfway through the dipping process, while I was complaining about my messy counters and sticky fingers my daughter came up with a brilliant idea: just combine the cornstarch and eggs, stir it into a paste, and then pour it over the chicken. No more messy counters or hands, and it really sped up the preparation time.

This sweet and sour chicken is amazing but it’s loaded with sugar, salt, and fat. I reduced the garlic salt by half since there’s plenty of salt in the soy sauce, and didn’t miss it at all. I may substitute garlic powder for the garlic salt the next time I make this dish to further reduce the salt.

The vegetable fried rice was also delicious and a snap to prepare. No complaints here and no tweaking of the recipe was necessary. If you throw in some diced chicken, ham, or shrimp it would make a great main dish. With the process improvement now in place, this make-at-home sweet and sour chicken and vegetable fried rice are must tries. Here’s a close-up shot. Get the recipe here.