Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

It's 7:30 in the morning right now which is by no means an optimal time at my house for me being on the computer, but this dinner last night was so good that I couldn't wait! Plus my kids are upstairs (supposedly getting dressed, but I think in actuality they're watching Pink Panther cartoons) and I'm waiting for my coffee to cool off a bit, so I figured I might as well jump on the computer. I'm sure I'll regret it when I'm scrambling an hour from now to get us out the door. Oh well.

This, of course, came from Pinterest. Boy #1 LOVES sweet and sour chicken when we get Chinese take-out, so I thought he'd be all over this. I was going to make it one night last week until I saw it had to bake for an hour and knew that just wasn't going to fit into the time frame I had to prepare dinner that night. Boy #1 was disappointed, but he was super excited to come home from school yesterday and find out we were having it last night.

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken
Source: Life As A Lofthouse blog via Pinterest.com

The chicken coating:
3-4 boneless chicken breasts
salt + pepper
1 cup cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:
3/4 cup sugar
4 tbs ketchup
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp garlic salt

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs. Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.

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I have to say that this was pretty time consuming to make. It took me awhile to find a groove with the breading/egg wash/frying. Eventually I figured out to move a batch to the egg wash once I had put a batch in the skillet and start a new batch then in the cornstarch. When I flipped the chicken in the skillet, I flipped the chicken pieces in the egg wash, then they were ready to go once I took the skillet batch out. Did you follow that? I also had to adjust the cooking time and temperature. My chicken took longer to thaw than I anticipated, and we had to eat at a certain time last night. I ended up baking it for 30 minutes at 375, and it turned out great. I stirred it around once during baking and then again once it came out of the oven.

We all really liked this. REALLY liked it. Boy #1 is taking the leftovers in his lunch today. The husband and I were both standing over the baking dish taking bites last night once we were done eating. My only real concern with it was the 3/4 cup of sugar in the sauce. It seems like a lot. Next time I may try to scale that back a bit and see what happens. This is definitely something I'll make again, I'll just be sure to allow enough time for all the steps!