Friday, February 5, 2010

Frugal Food Friday: Sweet and Sour Chicken

Looking for the reusable snack bag giveaway?  Click HERE

This recipe comes from the same cookbook as last week, "Quick and Healthy Recipes and Ideas" by Brenda J. Ponchtera.  Our kids LOVE it!  (And I highly recommend her cookbook!  I want to get the second one sometime.)

We serve this over brown rice.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Drain: 1 can (8 oz) unsweetened pineapple chunks, packed in juice, reserving juice.


In saucepan put:
1 lb. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
reserved pineapple juice
1 cup reduced-salt chicken broth
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar or equivalent amount of artificial sweetener
2 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp chopped garlic. Cover and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes.

Add and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
1 cup sliced celery
1 small onion, quartered
1 green pepper, sliced
pineapple.

Separately combine:
3 Tbsp. Cornstarch
1/4 cup water Gradually stir into hot mixture. Continue to cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Some things I like to do a bit differently:
I like to add two or sometimes three bell peppers instead of just one and have one of them be a red bell pepper if I can find them on sale.
Instead of chicken broth, I use water and the necessary amount of bouillon.

Nutrition Information:
Yield: 5 cups (5 servings)
One Serving: 1 cup
Calories per serving: 230 with sugar, 190 with artificial sweetener
Fat: 3 grams
Exchanges: with sugar: 3 lean meat, 1 starch, 1 vegetable, 1/2 fruit (with artificial sweetener: reduce starch to 1/2) Due to the low fat content of chicken breasts, the calories are less than the exchanges would compute.

3 comments:

Kathy Haynie said...

Polly, this looks so easy, and the calorie counts fit just fine with my "400-calorie meal" plan. Thanks for a great menu idea!

Katie Lewis said...

Sounds good Polly! Thanks! :)

Kathy Haynie said...

We had this for dinner tonight! Delicious, and very easy to make. It looks so pretty with all the yummy vegies in it!

We'd love to hear from you!

Want to write a guest post for The Skinny? E-mail Katie at kathleenann08 (at) gmail (dot) com.