the best sweet and sour chicken recipe ever

Hello, and welcome to the first segment of Cooking Like a F.O.B.

Maybe you're a study abroad student looking to relive your PRC glory days. Maybe you're a Chinese American seeking to recapture the taste of your youth. Or maybe you're just some creepy white guy with an Asian fetish. Whatever your situation... it most likely comes down to this. You miss Chinese food. You need some of that 中国菜, stat. Being the money-saving college student that you probably are, you may try to cook it for yourself. You could try Googling a recipe. But chances are it will suck. Big time.



Look at that. It served with pasta! PASTA!!?!1 Bitch, please. "The best sweet and sour chicken ever?" Only if you're idea of "the best" is the frozen food section of Trader Joe's.

But enough with the bullshit. Let me present you...

"The Best Sweet and Sour Chicken You Have Ever Tasted"

Ingredients:
250 grams of chicken
1/4 pineapple
1 green pepper
1 egg
100 grams of ketchup
salt
pepper
sugar
white vinegar
cornstarch

1. Dice the chicken, and flatten them with the back of knife. Put some salt and a half of whipped egg into the chicken, and knead the chicken follow one direction. Then coat them with starch and shape into balls.
2. Fry the chicken balls in the oil 80-100 centigrade and then take them out after the surface become hard. Put the chicken balls into the oil again when the oil become hotter, and pick out after the surface is gold.
3. Dice the pineapple, and Slicing the green pepper. Spread the used oil on them.
4. Heat up the pot, and put a little oil and the ketchup into to stir. Then add water, salt, sugar, pepper, and white vinegar according to one's own preferences. After is is boiled put 2 and 3 into, and then stir and add starch mixed with cold water. Spread a little oil before finish.

I thought about neutralizing the recipe's Chinglish, but that's what gives it its character. Like most other Chinese dishes, it's a single-pan extravaganza. In China, we used a wok, but a large flat-bottomed skillet or pan is probably fine. 100 centigrade? I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but probably really hot. Once the oil gets bubbly, and then stops-- then you know it's hot enough. Fry the chicken, take it out, and then fry it again. Take it out, drain most of the oil (save what looks like 1/4 cup worth). Add seasonings to that oil, thicken with cornstarch dissolved in cold water to thicken. As far as specific measurements on the seasonings, I believe we used something like 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, a tablespoon of white vinegar, and two or three tbsp ketchup. I'll try something like this the next time I make it, and if the seasoning is off, I'll try again. How you go about it is really up to you. Use the recipe as a guideline, and make it up as you go along. That's what I did (for God's sake, NO FUCKING FLOUR!). The last time I made this, I had a Chinese man shouting the directions at me. In Chinese. You'll be fine.