What Makes a Great Sweet & Sour Chicken Dinner?
Put down that phone, and put away that takeout menu. With a frozen Asian entree, you can enjoy sweet and sour chicken any night of the week without ever leaving the house. A high-quality sweet and sour chicken dinner should have a glossy look to it, and the sauce should be translucent enough to reveal ingredients like pineapples, water chestnuts, flecks of red pepper and seasonings. Heated and ready to serve, a good sweet and sour chicken meal should have fairly clear chicken and sauce aromas. The rice aroma is also important—it should smell like jasmine rice. The overall aroma will waft with a mixture of chicken, rice, ginger, carmelized sugar, soy and pepper. Sweetness will be the first and biggest basic taste in a sweet and sour dish. Equal parts sour and salt will follow, proving a balance to the sweetness. Overall, a high-quality sweet and sour chicken dish should have a medium level of flavor and, like the aroma, it should offer a complexity of chicken, rice, ginger, carmelized s
