The tradition of preparing sweet and sour sauce for various dishes came to Russia from Chinese cuisine, where such a combination of tastes is considered one of the best. Many chefs know that the best dish can be obtained if you follow the tips given in the original source, or at least try to bring the recipe as close as possible to this. Gourmets often wonder why sweet and sour pork served in a Chinese restaurant is significantly different in taste from similar home-made food. The chefs have a lot of secrets of this, from the choice of products to special spices and spices.
However, you can still try to cook such a dish and surprise your family or guests. After all, if you take on something with a soul, then the result can be amazing, and you will certainly be considered an excellent chef.
The most often cooked pork or beef in this sauce, but you can take lamb, poultry meat (most often, chicken). The basis for the dish in a modern interpretation is tomato paste or concentrated juice. As a result of this, the taste of the resulting product with chicken may resemble the well-known Georgian dish "chakhokhbili". The difference will be that special spices are placed in the sweet and sour sauce, which will make the taste more saturated.
It should be noted that in the preparation of this dish according to Chinese traditions, salt is practically not used. The emphasis is on other taste characteristics. In Chinese cuisine, such a sauce is prepared not only for meat, it is pickled and made with seafood, vegetables, fish, etc.
So, if you take chicken as a basis, the recipe will sound as follows. A half kilogram of fillet is cut into small pieces, preferably of the same size. After that, the meat is pickled. For chicken in this case, it is recommended to use soy sauce (3-4 tablespoons) mixed with a raw egg. It is recommended to salt the marinade to taste (you should not put too much salt, since the taste of the mixture will be saturated). To make sweet and sour sauce for chicken, you need 375 grams of vinegar (preferably not ordinary, but rice used in Chinese cuisine). The liquid boils, a little less than a glass of sugar is placed in it, and it is left on fire for several minutes. Then half a glass of ketchup (you can take tomato paste) and a spoonful of soy sauce are placed in the mixture. The resulting mass boils for about 5 minutes. To thicken the sauce, a little flour is put in it. The mixture is poured into a lightly fried meat in a pan. Chicken fillet is left to stew until cooked.
You can add onions, carrots and other vegetables to the dish, so that more flavoring shades appear. Also, do not forget that almost everywhere in Chinese cuisine ginger is used, which can be put in sweet and sour sauce, both raw and pickled. It is worth noting that you can cook meat separately, and before serving, pour the resulting gravy.
There is the following recipe for making sweet and sour sauce, which can go well with seafood. So, you need about 400 grams of medium-sized peeled shrimp. Two small onions finely chopped. 2-3 bell peppers, preferably of different colors, are diced. Vegetables are fried for a while in a pan. A raw egg, a little flour and a couple of spoons of soy sauce are added to the shrimp, after which they are deep-fried. Seafood is put to vegetables. A mixture of tomato paste (about 5 tablespoons) is poured here, you can replace it with ketchup or concentrated juice, rice vinegar and sugar (2 tablespoons each). The dish is cooked for about 5 minutes. Lastly, pieces of pineapple are laid out here, after which the dishes are left for some time on low heat, and then removed and cooled.