Sweet and Sour Chicken Karaage

Hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we're diving back into our series dedicated to classic Americanized Chinese cuisine with a look at the Sweet and Sour Chicken, from PF Chang's. For those new to the channel, in this series, we have been deconstructing classic dishes from Americanized Chinese cuisine (including a long and ever growing list of dishes from the PF Chang's menu), then seeing what they might look like when reconstructed through the lens of more traditional wok cooking. For those not familiar, the P.F. Chang's Sweet and Sour chicken, as expected, sticks pretty closely to how a traditional version of this dish would be assembled, which is to say, a battered and fried piece of chicken breast, combined with a medley of stir fried veggies, and coated with a vinegar forward sweet and savory glaze. 

The source of our sour element today will of course come from the use of vinegar in our glaze, with our sweeter qualities iconically coming from the use of ketchup and pineapple juice. Perhaps most unusual about the PF Chang's sweet and sour chicken, though, is its light and golden coloring, which stands out because sweet and sour chicken is more typically tinted a deep dark red color, due to the high amount of ketchup included in its sauce. So, we'll definitely be taking a look at how we go about incorporating our ketchup today, as well as a closer look into how I might go about supplementing our sweeter qualities with a bit of sweet chili sauce and chinese red vinegar too. Hope you try it.