Easy Homemade Sweet & Sour Chicken

This recipe will always have a special place in my heart, because it’s one of the very first dinners I learned to make when I was learning to cook for myself in college. And it is GOOD!

My roommate would make this for us all the time in a big 9×13 baking dish. And the two of us would gobble the whole thing down in just one night, easy. We served it over white rice and topped it with chow mein noodles. If you’re looking for a better-than-take-out recipe, this is it.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about frying the chicken.

Wait! Don’t leave! First of all, you don’t have to fry the pieces of chicken. In college, we would just pan fry it in a little bit of olive oil and cooking spray before baking and that was just fine. But since then, I’ve discovered that doing a little “deep” frying in my own kitchen is actually easier than pan frying AND it doesn’t really contribute as much oil to the meal as people generally think it does. I even took this picture to prove my point:

I measured out a cup of oil to fry my chicken pieces in over the stove top (it’s really not a very deep “deep fry” that I do), and as you can see– I used less than 1/4 cup of oil to fry the chicken! Once I realized how little oil I was actually using to deep fry food, I haven’t been nearly as scared. 

But that’s totally your call in this recipe. If you don’t want to do it, just skip that part of the recipe and give your chicken pieces a little pan fry with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. It will still turn out great!

This recipe is a little bit of a time commitment (so be warned!), but it’s also T-O-T-A-L-L-Y worth it!! I’d call it a cross between Sweet & Sour Chicken and Honey Chicken– both favorites in this house. If that sounds like your cup of tea, pin this recipe and make it ASAP!! 

Oriental Chicken