Sweet and Sour Chicken

I've never turned my hand at Sweet and Sour anything before. For someone who really loves to cook, its amazing how many of the "staples" I've never actually made. But tonight, I tackled and conquered some Sweet and Sour Chicken and it was downright tasty. Also pretty fast, with simple ingredients. The only thing I had to pick up at the store was the chicken breasts and some Apricot Preserves.

I won't elaborate much on this one. Its pretty straightforward :)

Sweet and Sour Chicken

(From Cooking Light, January/February 2011, "Chicken Breasts, 25 Ways")

4 chicken breasts
Salt & Pepper
1/4 cup low sodium chicken broth
3 T Apricot preserves
1 1/2 T low sodium soy sauce (I use a gluten-free one...)
2 T fresh lime juice
1 tsp Thai chile paste (or Sriracha Sauce, YUM!)
cilantro, chopped

- Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper and cook in a pan with a little olive oil. Set aside.
- In the same pan, while hot, add chicken broth, preserves and soy sauce. Scrape the bottom to get all the lovely little brown bits and bring the sauce just to a boil.
- Remove from heat, add lime juice and chile paste.
- Pour over chicken breast and top with fresh cilantro.

Voila! If you did some rice in a rice-cooker while this was going and added in a salad, you'd have a tasty dinner in about 20 minutes.


P.S. I adore Sriracha sauce (spicy, a little garlicy, almost sweet, MMMM) and it was perfect in this recipe. That said, I doubled the sauce portion of this (because who doesn't love extra sauce, right?), but the 2 tsp of Sriracha was a bit much. Running eyes and nose during dinner is totally inconvenient! But I'm a bit of a light-weight when it comes to heat. So just go slowly with your Sriracha. Don't get carried away, like I did. And you'll be fine.