Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

This sweet and sour baked chicken recipe can be made with the parts of the chicken we want, whether they are only breasts, wings, the chicken cut into pieces … or as we do it, which is using only good thighs. If the smallest members of the household are going to eat the dish, we always recommend using boneless parts, such as the breasts, but as we say, you can use whatever pieces you want. We are going to prepare two good chicken thighs to serve two diners.

We will clean the thighs well, remove the remains of the down that they may have, and then wash them with water under the tap to leave them very clean. Once washed, we dry them with a cloth or let them drain so that we can season them with salt and pepper to taste. Once we have the thighs ready, or the parts we decide to use for cooking, we will begin to prepare the sweet and sour sauce to let the chicken macerate in it and take its flavor.

In a suitable container, we are going to mix the ingredients of our sweet and sour sauce, that is to say, the vinegar, the freshly squeezed orange juice, and the sugar, and stir it all for a while so that the sugar dissolves. Once this is done, we will finally add the ketchup, and we stir it again well so that it integrates with the previous sauce. When everything is homogeneously mixed, we taste the sauce and correct the flavor according to how intense we like it.

Now place the chicken thighs in a flat dish or tray and cover them with the sauce we have prepared. Ideally, they should be well covered with the sauce, so we should make more if necessary, or we will turn them over from time to time so that they absorb the flavors equally. Put the tray with the thighs and the sauce in the refrigerator and leave it there for at least 3 to 4 hours, the longer they are there, the tastier the thighs will be. If you use smaller pieces, less time would be enough.

When it is time to cook our sweet and sour baked chicken, turn the oven on at 190ºC and while it is heating up, drain the thighs and brown them in a frying pan or on a griddle with a drizzle of oil to seal them on both sides, but only for the time necessary to sear them. With this previous step, we get that they are sealed on the outside and remain juicy once we have baked them later, so they are richer and more appetizing. If you use breast, you can also do it, but it is not necessary if you use chopped chicken.

In the end, we place the chicken in a tray suitable to put in the oven, and once the oven is at the desired 190ºC, we put it in and leave it at that temperature for about half an hour. It is best to turn them over after about a quarter of an hour to be well-browned on both sides. While the chicken is baking, pour the sweet and sour sauce into the same frying pan and leave it on low heat so that it takes on the body, as long as the chicken is in the oven. Once the thighs are well cooked, take them out and sprinkle them with the sauce already reduced, and we can eat this wonderfully sweet and sour baked chicken very hot.