Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken
This Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken is made with popcorn chicken, bell peppers, pineapple, and the perfect homemade glaze – all ready in 30 minutes!
AN EASY WEEKNIGHT DINNER RECIPE
This Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe is a delicious and flavorful meal that will tastes just like your favorite take out spot- but better! It takes just a few simple ingredients and is cooked in one large pan for easy clean-up. Plus, it’s ready in just 30 minutes – perfect for busy weeknights. Serve this sweet and sour chicken over fluffy white rice or your favorite veggies for a tasty complete meal.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ’S)
Sure thing. I know some prefer to dip their sweet and sour chicken instead of having it coated in the sauce. To do this instead, prepare the sauce up until step 6, and then just serve it as a dipping sauce for the chicken instead of covering the chicken with it.
Yup. If you rather have a spicy chicken dish, add more chili flakes, or add some of your favorite hot sauce, like sriracha.
Take your classic sweet and sour chicken up a notch by adding green onion, fried shallots, or sesame seeds as a garnish.
You can make this as easy or as difficult as you like. Season up some bite-sized pieces of chicken with garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper to taste. Add in cornstarch and toss until well coated. Add ½ inch oil to a deep skillet over medium heat and fry the coated chicken until lightly browned. Make sure the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165°F. Once cooked, use paper towels to drain your chicken on. Fry all chicken and then proceed with the recipe as written.
We always serve it up with rice. It can be white, brown or fried rice. Or perhaps you’d maybe like to try a vegetable stir fry.
Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 hours, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
To reheat leftovers, toss the leftovers in a skillet and add a splash of water or chicken stock to help loosen up the sauce as it reheats. You can use the microwave but it may change the texture a bit.
INGREDIENTS NEEDED: (SEE RECIPE CARD BELOW FOR THE FULL RECIPE)
- green and red bell peppers – if you don’t like green bell peppers, you can use all red or yellow bell peppers.
- large sweet onion – I think even if you don’t like onion, it adds great flavor to the dish even if you don’t want to eat the onion itself.
- pineapple chunks with juice – you want to look for the chunks are in 100% juice, not syrup.
- white vinegar – this is the sour part in the sweet and sour sauce. Rice wine vinegar can also be used here.
- granulated sugar – I have never made this with any kind of sugar substitute but I’m sure it would work fine.
- ketchup – I know ketchup sounds weird in a sauce like this but it just works. It brings tomato and seasonings to the glaze. Trust me, it’s so good!
- cornstarch – this is used for thickening up the sauce.
- popcorn chicken – use any brand of frozen popcorn chicken you like. I like to cook mine up in the air fryer since it does it faster than the oven. This recipe works for nuggets as well. Popcorn chicken usually just has more of a crispier coating.
HOW TO MAKE SWEET AND SOUR CHICKEN
Cook the popcorn chicken in the oven or air fryer as per the instructions on the package. Once cooked, set it aside. In a large wok or skillet over medium heat, add the oil and let it heat up.
When the oil is hot, add the green bell pepper, red bell pepper, and diced onion. Cook them until they start to get a little charred and soften, which should take about 5-8 minutes. Stir occasionally during this time. To the skillet, add ⅓ cup of water, pineapple juice, vinegar, sugar, ketchup, and salt. Stir well to mix everything, and bring it to a simmer.
In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1 tablespoon of water with the cornstarch. Once the mixture in the skillet starts simmering, slowly pour in the cornstarch mixture while constantly whisking. Keep whisking until the sauce thickens. Immediately add the popcorn chicken and pineapple chunks to the skillet and toss it in the sauce until the chicken is fully coated and heated through.
Serve it right away.
CRAVING MORE RECIPES?
Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken
Ingredients
- 24 ounce bag popcorn chicken
- 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 green bell pepper, large diced
- 1 red bell pepper, large diced
- 1 cup sweet onion, large diced
- ⅓ cup water
- ⅓ cup pineapple juice (you can use the juice from the canned pineapple)
- ⅓ cup white vinegar
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- 2 ½ Tablespoons ketchup
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon water
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 cup pineapple chunks in 100% juice, drained
Instructions
- Cook 24 ounce bag popcorn chicken (obviously cook the chicken – not the bag) in the oven or air fryer as per the instructions on the package. Once cooked, set it aside.
- In a large wok or skillet over medium heat, add 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil and let it heat up.
- When the oil is hot, add 1 green bell pepper, large diced, 1 red bell pepper, large diced and 1 cup sweet onion, large diced . Cook them until they start to get a little charred and soften, which should take about 5-8 minutes. Stir occasionally during this time.
- To the skillet, add 1/3 cup water, 1/3 cup pineapple juice, 1/3 cup white vinegar, 2/3 cup granulated sugar, 2 1/2 Tablespoons ketchup and ½ teaspoon salt and bring it to a simmer.
- In a small bowl, combine 1 Tablespoon water with 1 Tablespoon cornstarch.
- Once the mixture in the skillet starts simmering, slowly pour in the cornstarch mixture while constantly whisking. Keep whisking until the sauce thickens.
- Immediately add the popcorn chicken and 1 cup pineapple chunks in 100% juice, drained to the skillet and toss it in the sauce until the chicken is fully coated and heated through.
- Serve it right away with rice (or your favorite side.)
Video
Notes
- Please refer to my FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) and ingredient list above for other substitutions or for the answers to the most common questions.
Nutrition
Nutritional Disclaimer
“The Country Cook” is not a dietician or nutritionist, and any nutritional information shared is an estimate. If calorie count and other nutritional values are important to you, we recommend running the ingredients through whichever online nutritional calculator you prefer. Calories and other nutritional values can vary quite a bit depending on which brands were used.
Brandie,
Oh my goodness, I fixed this tonight and it is absolutely delicious!
I have so many of your recipes I want to try but when you live alone it just takes time, lol!
I am a fan of yours anyway. Thank you so much for sharing your talents
Yay! That makes me so happy to hear Deborah! I also am SO happy to hear you enjoy cooking for yourself. So many times I hear women just don’t want to do it because it’s just them. That bothers me because I think we (and by we, I mean women) often think that cooking is only done for others and we forget that we matter too and it’s important to cook good meals just for us that we alone enjoy! I really hope you try others and please always let me know what you think!! I am so happy you are here 🙂
I have a question. I usually have my groceries delivered and was wondering if you would happen to know if the popcorn chicken is bio engineered? Due to some health issues I am trying to stay away from bioengineered products. Hoping it’s not because this sounds super easy and delicious!
I’m really not sure & I don’t have a bag at home to look. I’m sorry! What health reasons would cause this? I’m just curious. I’m not sure folks realize they’ve been eating bioengineered products for years and we’ve been GMO’ing food since the beginning of time to make it more drought & bug resistant. Did you know apples, all potatoes, all corn and all soybeans are bioengineered? So many of our foods are made with corn oil and soybean oil. I think it sounds like a scary word but Congress changed the name a while back so now people see bioengineered instead of GMO and it’s scaring people because it does sound like a scary word. Bioengineering just mean science helped create the specific crop instead of a human doing the cross-pollination. Science just helps us be more effective at it.
Did you know nearly all of our pigs, chickens and beef all eat bioengineered feed? Most animal feed (even grass fed animals) have their food supplemented in the winter and it usually has some sort of corn or soybean feed added to it to keep the animals strong and healthy. So technically if you are eating any animal meat, it most likely would have been fed bioengineered feed. Also, side note: the government does not make farmers prove their meat was strictly grass fed throughout their entire lives. So any company can technically slap a label that their meat was “grass fed” but don’t have to prove it to the consumer that the animal had only grass its entire life. However, if they are truly grass fed, they will have the USDA come in and inspect their process from start to finish to prove it was fully grass fed. So if you truly want to make sure all of your meat is grass fed, you will want to look for a label that specifically says “USDA Certified Grass Fed” – if it doesn’t say that, chances are it may not have been fully grass fed its entire life.
So even if that popcorn chicken doesn’t say “bioengineered” – the chicken could’ve eaten bioengineered feed but they don’t have to disclose that. The government does not monitor the feed that the animal eats and there is no third party that does either.
There is no longterm scientific data that has been peer reviewed that bioengineered (GMO) products are any more unsafe to eat than organic products. The FDA & USDA scientists (and third parties outside of the government) have done a ton of scientific studies for decades and have found that it is safe to consume. https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download#:~:text=Since%20GMO%20foods%20were%20introduced,safe%20as%20non%2DGMO%20foods
If you’d like to learn more about all the independent scientific studies done here & around the world, Harvard has pulled all that data together & there is a website within that article that you can use that will tell you what crops have been bio genetically engineered. If that crop is in your food item (for example, if the chicken was fried in corn, soybean oil, cottonseed and canola oil), it would be considered bioengineered since all corn and soybeans are GMO’s. Or if there is potato starch in it which is used as a thickening agent, it would be technically bioengineered, etc. All corn, soybean, cottonseed, and canola oils contain bioengineered ingredients. Many sweeteners, and products like candy and chocolate that contain them, can come from GMO sources.
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/will-gmos-hurt-my-body/
It’s a very hard thing to navigate and you are relying on the government to label these products correctly. But basically, if bioengineering really is a huge concern for you and you absolutely cannot eat any of it for health reasons, you are trusting the government to tell you if a product is bioengineered. So you may want to do some very detailed research into all the ways bioengineered food can enter all the food you eat. And you will be surprised at all the ways it is in nearly everything we eat. If you trust the government enough to make sure all these companies label their products then there has to be a level of trust also in the science that the government has done about these products.
Sorry this is long but it’s something I feel very strongly about and consumers need to be informed by actual science and data, not people trying to sell scary sensationalism. Everyone should know what is in their food, and along with that, the data behind it as well.