I had skipped two recipes in my cook through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook, both because I would be the only one in my family to eat it. The first was Sweet and Sour Chicken or Pork and the second was Spring Vegetables with Olives and Sichuan Peppercorns. I’m the only that eats cooked pineapple (the sweet and sour recipe), and I’m the only one that eats olives (the spring vegetables recipe). This past Thursday I had the unusual situation of being the only one home, so I invited some friends over for dinner party to try both of these recipes. This is how the Sweet and Sour Chicken or Pork went.

I opted for chicken thighs as the meat for this dish, because I thought they’d be the tastiest choice. The recipe specifically calls for canned pineapple. Kenji notes “for this recipe canned pineapple with its juice works better than fresh.” Conveniently, canned is a lot easier to prep. The signature sauce is a combination of juice from the canned pineapple, ketchup, vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar.

This is a velveted meat recipe, so the first steps are washing and marinating the chicken, and then simmering in water until mostly cooked. In a clean wok, bell peppers and onion are stir-fried, then garlic and ginger are added. Once that’s fragrant, the chicken is returned to the wok and then the pineapple. The sauce is added and then some corn starch slurry to thicken it up.

I think this is another recipe with an error. Adding the vinegar with the rest of the sauce ingredients seemed to work.

This one went over well with the group and was completely gone by the end of dinner. I think I would have preferred to cube instead of thinly slice the chicken and stir-fry it directly instead of velveting. A bit more chew and browning would have improved the dish. The sauce was very tasty.

I’d make this one again if my family would eat it.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.