People always ask me for recommend dishes when they go out to eat at a Chinese restaurant near my area. I always tell them to get sweet and sour chicken. It’s always been my go-to whenever I go out to eat. It’s delicious and cheap (2 of my favorite things). But now, I think to myself “I feel like I can make this to fit my likening”. My dad has his recipe of sweet and sour chicken but the chicken was deep fried. I’m not a big fan of deep fried foods because the chicken tend to turn out too crunchy.

In this recipe, I replaced the deep fried chicken with grilled chicken because I love my chicken to be tender. And since chicken can sometimes be a heavy meat, I paired it up with bell peppers. It brings so much color onto your dish. I love using red peppers because it has that extra natural sweetness, but you can combo it with many different colors of bell peppers as like (the more variety colors, the more beautiful the dish is). And don’t worry if you’re vegetarian. Substituting the chicken with extra firm tofu or just sweet and sour peppers will do nicely.

Chicken

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 boneless chicken breasts

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

Vegetables

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 red onion, finely sliced

4 red peppers (or your favorite bell pepper color) finely sliced

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 bunch basil

Directions

For the chicken, butterfly cut the chicken breast by cutting the breast horizontally 3/4 way in. Open up the breast. If the breast is uneven, use a heavy weight (like a pot) and press down. Slice the breast into 1/2 inch pieces. In a hot frying pan over medium high heat, add vegetable oil and sliced chicken breasts. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and let it cook until lightly brown (7-8 minutes). Set aside the chicken in a plate but do not wash the pan. It has load of flavors for the vegetables.

For the vegetables, in the same pan from the chicken over medium high heat, add vegetable oil, onions and red peppers. Saute them in for 2-3 minutes to get the maximum amount of flavor.  Add the chicken, salt, pepper, sugar and red wine vinegar and continue cooking for 2 minutes. Lastly add the extra virgin olive oil and let it stew for 2 minutes

To serve, pick off the basil leaves from the stem. Combine all the leaves together, roll it up and finely slice (this is called chiffonade). Sprinkle the basil leaves on top the chicken and peppers and serve.

This recipe can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days.