The Sweet and Sour Sauce Recipe That You Can Make With 5 Ingredients (2024)

FAQs

What is traditional sweet and sour sauce made of? ›

While sweet and sour can be found in diverse forms in China, the American version builds upon the simple mixture of sugar, vinegar, and spices with the addition of fruit juice—most commonly pineapple—and ketchup, giving the sauce both its red hue and uniquely Western flavor.

Alternative Sweet and Sour Sauce

1 cup pineapple juice. 1/3 cup water. 3 tablespoons vinegar. 1 tablespoon soy sauce.

The dish is served with sweet and sour sauce, typically made by boiling vinegar, sugar, and water with a variety of fruits and vegetables like carrot, cucumber, onion, wood ear mushroom, and pineapple. Starch slurry is used to thicken the sauce.

Sweet and Sour Sauce is a sauce made by combining a sweet component and a sour component with cornstarch as the thickening agent. Some of the common sweet components are brown sugar, granulated white sugar, and honey.

Lemon or lime juice are the two most common substitutes for white vinegar. You can also use rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar or malt vinegar but the taste of your sauce might be a tad different. Soy Sauce – I used low sodium.

Sweet and Sour Triple (dinner)

Shrimp, chicken and pork with sweet sour sauce.

Sour Mix: What's On the Shelf? There are dozens of commercial sour mix available at grocery and liquor stores, sometimes called sweet and sour, margarita, Collins mix, or lemon-lime mix.

How long is sweet and sour sauce good for? Once opened, a commercially bottled sweet and sour sauce should be good for one year.

Transfer sauce to a heatproof dish. If not using immediately, allow the sauce to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate, in an airtight container, until ready to use. Sweet and Sour Sauce will keep up to two weeks.

From personal experience of not having canned/fresh pineapples in the kitchen, I just used a bit of lemon juice and an orange cut into large chunks. Chinese plum sweet & sour mix is one of my favorites. You can find recipes online. Also mango with a dose of red cane rum in it, but made about the same as plum.

How do you make sweet and sour sauce less watery? ›

Use Flour and Water

Combine 2 tablespoons flour with every 1/4 cup cold water and whisk until smooth. Add the mixture to your sauce over medium heat, and continue to stir and cook until you've reached your desired consistency. Test with a spoon.

Sweet and sour sauce tastes just like it sounds. A little bit sweet and a little bit sour at the same time. You will also have notes from whatever you flavour it with. The sweet and sour tastes can be made with a simple sugar and vinegar mix.

As we've already mentioned, sweet and sour dishes do actually exist in China. (Unlike other Chinese American dishes like General Tso's Chicken or Chop Suey.) However, it is a dish that has been heavily Americanized as well. Many sweet and sour sauces here in the U.S. are much sweeter than the Chinese version.

Normally, when we consume something like a lemon (which has both sour and sweet flavors), the brain receives citric acid (sour) signals at a slower rate than sucrose (sugar) signals (Yamamoto et al., 2006).

While originating from China in the 1700s, sweet and sour sauce developed into the popular sauce it is today in America during the late 19th century.

I'm sure they mix a sweet sauce with soy and vinegar. You could easily look this up on line- how to make your own sweet & sour. The Chinese do not buy it. They know how to make it.

Ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Water, Apricot Puree Concentrate And/or Peach Puree Concentrate, Distilled Vinegar, Contains 2% Or Less: Soy Sauce (water, Soybeans, Wheat, Salt), Salt, Modified Food Starch, Sherry Wine Powder, Dextrose, Soybean Oil, Xanthan Gum, Spices, Sodium Benzoate (preservative), Natural ...

At its core, a base sweet and sour sauce is made with a balance of sugar and vinegar, and to get the bright red color, most restaurants will use red food coloring.