Sweet and Sour Sauce
Sweet and sour is a balance of four things: sugar, vinegar, soy and tomato. Cornflour thickens it, and that is where the only difficulty hides — it never goes into hot liquid dry, always slaked in cold water. And the pan comes off at once, because overcooked starch thins back out.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Total
- 20 min
- Servings
- 8
- Level
- Easy
- Per serving
- 90 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: about 350 ml, 8 portions
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Mix the base
Combine the water, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and ketchup in a small pan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
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Step 2: Add ginger and garlic
Add them and simmer 2 minutes so they give their aroma to the liquid rather than staying raw.
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Step 3: Slake the cornflour
Stir it smoothly into 3 spoons of cold water. Dry cornflour into hot sauce is how you get lumps.
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Step 4: Thicken
Pour the slurry in a thin stream, stirring constantly. It thickens and turns glossy within 30–40 seconds.
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Step 5: Off the heat at once
Give it one more minute and take it off. Prolonged boiling breaks the starch bonds and the sauce thins again, irreversibly.
Tips & variations
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Tip
It thickens further as it cools. Take it off slightly looser than you want it on the table.
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Tip
Balance it in pairs: not sharp enough, a spoon of vinegar; too sharp, a spoon of sugar. The soy sauce handles the salt, so no salting separately.
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Variation
With 100 g of diced pineapple added at the end it is the classic for chicken. With chilli and a spoon of honey it becomes hot and sticky, for ribs.
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Storage
A week in a jar in the fridge. Warm it before serving — cold, a starch-thickened sauce sets too thick and jelly-like.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 8 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 90 kcal | 720 kcal |
| Protein | 1 g | 8 g |
| Fat | 0 g | 0 g |
| Carbohydrates | 22 g | 176 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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