OT: Wanted - Easy Sweet-n-Sour Sauce

My finances are gonna be really tight for a little while, but that doesn't mean I don't still want to eat well! I'm looking for a basic old Hawaiian gran'ma type sweet-n-sour sauce: cheap, quick, & easy. Something with around 5 ingedients I can whip up in 1/2 an hour to simmer cheap cuts of pork in.

I rely on Contadina canned sweet n sour sauce when I want it quick and cheap!

I think that sweet and sour sauce is one of those things that is so cheap, it would cost you MORE to buy the ingredients than it would to just buy the sauce.

There's a lot of stuff like that!

Can of tomato sauce: 2 bucks

Home made tomato sauce (with tomatoes, olive oil, basil, garlic, etc): 6 bucks

On 2003-10-25 16:37, Traderpup wrote:
I rely on Contadina canned sweet n sour sauce when I want it quick and cheap!

TraderP,

I thought I was your 'quick and cheap'.

On 2003-10-26 10:31, Tiki_Bong wrote:

TraderP,

I thought I was your 'quick and cheap'.

Bong, you'll always be my 'quick and cheap', but having to fight Baxdog for you is really wearing me out!

Bring to a boil and stir to dissolve sugar:

3/4 cup chicken stock (use boullion cubes)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vinegar
1/4 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp. sherry

Blend in a separate bowl:
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1/4 cup pineapple juice

then stir into boiling mixture and cook on low heat till thickened.

[ Edited by: SES on 2003-10-27 15:42 ]

Thank you everyone!

SES, I'm going to try that recipe this week.

Traderpup/Tikifish, you may be right, but I'm not crazy about the Contadina sauce. The sauces that I usually like seem to cost about as much as home-made, so why not try it myself? I'll triple the recipe, pour the extra into icecube trays, freeze it & store it in ziplocks.

Mr. Bong, you may be Cheap, but you're not Easy!

Here is a quick, cheap and easy one, as well as what is served over the best deep fried goodness in many greasy chinese food dives:

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup vinigar
tsp soysauce
couple drops red food dye
1 tsp cornstarch.
heat till desired thickness

If you want less quick cheap and easy ( and better) add:
diced pineapple and ginger, and a little hunan chili paste.

bring on the wontons!

Thank you very much, sir! That's very much what I wanted. I'll just leave out the food coloring, add the pineapple, et voila!

Generic sauce recipe:

2 parts tomato product
1 part sugar
1 part vinegar

simmer with extras.

This is a template for a batch of different sauces:

Use ketchup, brown sugar, and cider vinegar with a cap of liquid smoke and you've got a decent bbq sauce.

Use tomato sauce, white sugar and white vinegar with some pineapple chunks, tomato and pepper pieces and you've got the sauce every chinese restaurant seems to use for their sweet and sour chicken.

I've used those proportions for a ton of different sauces by mixing in a little honey, pineapple juice, hot stuff, etc. It's really versatile and you can probably get something really close to what you're looking for from it.