Pineapple Chicken Stir Fry

This pineapple chicken stir fry has a Chinese sweet and sour feel to it, but with a more complex flavour profile but with no extra work!

Sticky Spicy Sweet and Sour Chicken.

Sweet and sour is so often the bedrock flavour profile of many of my recipes.

Whether it be obvious like my sweet and sour pork chops or my chicken pathia sweet and sour curry, or a little more obscure as in my baked feta cheese with tomatoes and peppers it is my favourite flavour mojo.

This Chinese takeaway inspired, slight spicy pineapple chicken stir fry recipe aims for a rounder flavour than a typical sauce.

If you favour a more traditional sauce then you could use the one that I make in my crispy battered sweet and sour chicken balls recipe.

The sweet elements in this chicken stir fry are pineapple, pineapple juice, ketchup and peppers and just a little sugar!

Our sour elements come from both rice wine and dark and rich Chinkiang vinegar.

Throw in some soy sauce for seasoning and we are good to rock and roll.

Ingredient Guide.

There a couple of ingredients here that you may not have come across before.

The first is Chinkiang vinegar, I use it ALL OF THE TIME, in everything from my Chinese Spare ribs through to my kung pao chicken.

It is a rice vinegar from Southern China but it is dark and has a gloriously round flavour whilst retaining a sharpness. It adds a rich complexity to the flavour of the sweet and sour sauce for this pineapple chicken.

You can use any rice vinegar in this recipe but it will change the flavour significantly.

Next up is rice wine, I usually use Shaoxing wine, it adds a different type of sharpness to the recipe.

Again it is an ingredient I use all of the time, so don’t worry about it not getting used. I have plenty of recipes for you to use it up in!

A couple of other notes on this pineapple chicken recipe:

1. Avoid using canned pineapple in syrup, it adds way too much sweetness to this recipe.
2. Fresh pineapple is perfectly ok to use.
3. Feel free to either omit or increase the chilli flakes.

Serving Suggestions.

This simple sweet and sour pineapple chicken recipe is most often served with plain boiled rice in my house.

Although on occasions I do serve it with my fried potatoes. I’m British and “chips” work with everything especially if it has a sweet and sour sauce!

It is also great served alongside my stir fried broccoli or asparagus stir fry.

If you are a noodle fiend then these soy and peanut noodles would also work really well!