Sweet & Sour Chicken Fried Rice

There's something about the new year that makes us crave Asian comfort food. We've loaded up on all the traditional holiday food so we want something totally different. Or maybe we are just looking for a different kind of carb and sodium source, who knows? On this night in particular, what we really wanted was our favorite soup dumplings but that's just not something I can make, and they were too far away to go get. However, we had the contents to combine two of our other favorite dishes, a fried rice and a sweet and sour chicken, which created a tasty little hybrid. 

I usually like to make my own sauces for a number of reasons. You know exactly what's going into them, you can make them to taste, and it allows for some flexibility and creativity. However, if you have a jarred sauce already, there's the convenience factor that sometimes cannot be beat. I had planned to do a sweet and sour chicken recipe coming up and grabbed a jarred sweet and sour sauce on a recent grocery run thinking that perhaps this would come in handy rather than making my own - and so it did. It also helped to have pre-chopped onions and chopped carrot sticks that Max had done for his daily snacks. From a prep standpoint, I just had to chop the carrots a bit smaller and the bell pepper, which were easy to do as the chicken was cooking.

You will only have 1 pan to clean afterwards and it takes just 5 simple steps to make. With the time saving helpers of pre-chopped veggies and jarred sauce, this meal took maybe 20 minutes to whip up and it definitely hit the spot with our family - even our pickiest eater, Hadley. If you want to turn up the heat and don't have small tot taste buds to consider, adding in some red pepper flakes or Sriracha would be a fun way to give it some heat!

Ingredients
Yields 5-6 servings

• 1 lb. chicken tenders, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 6-8 oz. sweet and sour sauce (I used this brand) 
• 1 cup onions, diced
• 1 cup carrots, diced
• 1/2 -3/4 cup edamame, deshelled (okay to use frozen, they cook quickly in the pan!)
• 2 eggs, lightly scrambled
• 1 microwavable Garlic Quinoa/Brown Rice blend (we use this one, add a second if you like your dish to be heavy on the quinoa/rice)
• Tamari or Soy Sauce to taste

1. In a large chef's pan, cook your chicken on medium high heat, doused in the Sweet and Sour sauce. When no longer pink, about 8-10 minutes, move chicken and scrape leftover sauce from the pan to a plate and set aside. 

2. With some remnants of sauce left in the pan, add your onions and carrots. Once onions are translucent, add the red bell pepper and the edamame. Once all veggies are soft, move to the plate with chicken. 

3. Now add your eggs to the pan surface and scramble until cooked to your liking. 

4. While your eggs scramble, cook your quinoa/brown rice package according to directions (90 seconds in the microwave) then set aside. 

5. When eggs are done, add the garlic quinoa/brown rice blend to the pan with the scrambled eggs and then give it some flavor with the Tamari (a gluten free, low sodium version of soy sauce) or Soy Sauce. Next add your veggies back in, followed by the sweet and sour chicken chunks. Mix it all together and you have yourself dinner ready to plate.