Homemade Sweet and Sour Sauce

5 from 1 vote

A quick and easy homemade sweet and sour sauce made entirely from ‘normal’ everyday ingredients found in most kitchens… lower in sugar than most recipes and NO KETCHUP (or any other highly processed, additive-laden ingredients for that matter!) This Homemade Sweet and Sour Sauce takes less than 10 minutes to make and tastes incredible – so much nicer than overly sugary, artificial-tasting, store-bought sweet and sour sauces!

Course Sauces

Cuisine Chinese

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 5

Total Time 10

Servings people

Calories 69kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cornflour (US – cornstarch)
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar, or rice wine vinegar)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 cloves garlic grated or crushed
1 cm fresh ginger grated
2 tablespoons tomato puree
2 tablespoons brown sugar (See Note 1)
165 ml pineapple juice (OR the juice from one 425g / 15oz tin pineapple chunks in juice)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Place the cornflour and the vinegar in a small saucepan. Stir to combine thoroughly.
Add the soy sauce, garlic, ginger, tomato puree and brown sugar, and stir to combine. Then add the pineapple juice and, again, stir to combine thoroughly.
Heat the sauce until it starts to bubble, then turn the heat right down and simmer for 2-3 minutes, or until you’ve reached your desired consistency.
Alternatively, if you are using this sauce in a recipe like Sweet and Sour Chicken, then there’s no need to pre-cook the sauce. Simply mix up the ingredients in a jam jar, or similar, and then throw the sauce straight into the Sweet and Sour Chicken for the last 2-3 minutes of cooking time to cook through and thicken up.

Notes

My Sweet and Sour Sauce contains only 2 tablespoons of sugar (½ a tablespoon per person), as I found that was the minimum you can get away with and still have a really great tasting sauce. If you really really don’t like adding sugar to your food, you can just about get away with 1 tablespoon of sugar, but any less than that and it really is just ‘sour’ sauce! Alternatively, if you prefer a sweeter sauce, increase the quantity to 3 tablespoons of sugar.
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition