Sweet & Sour of Awesomeness

I've been in a condiment mood lately. This past week, I've made corn- and gluten-free versions of recipes for yellow mustard and ketchup. Both of these turned out pretty fantastically. So I thought I'd try my hand at something more challenging.

Dan and I had a ton and a half of trouble finding a me-safe sweet and sour sauce. The one we found was pretty freaking awesome. But recently, the grocery store stopped carrying it. And even more recently, we ran out of the last bit of our jar of it. But the jar did have an ingredient list on it, which wasn't that long, so I thought maybe I could use that as a jumping off point to try and figure out how to make a version of it.

That's what I did tonight.

I made sweet and sour pineapple pork and it was wonderful. And the sauce is what really made it. I know this was just my first shot at replicating the sauce, but it was so fantastic. So I thought I'd share.

Sweet & Sour Sauce

Ingredients:
- ⅓ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup cider vinegar
- ½ cup pineapple juice
- a dash of cayenne
- 1 green onion, thinly sliced
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon white pepper
- 2 teaspoons arrowroot powder (approx.)

Directions:
1. Combine ingredients in sauce pan and bring to a boil
2. Simmer for 10 - 15 minutes.
3. Add arrowroot powder to thicken (try dissolving the arrowroot in a small amount of water before adding to the hot sauce). Stir in powder then remove from heat.

(The original ingredient list included serrano pepper (instead of cayenne) and bell peppers (which I hate and thus will never buy from the store, much less cook with).)

See? So simple! So I stir-fried up some onions, pork cubes and pineapple then, when it was all cooked, I dumped in the entire sauce recipe. It was perfect!

Now I want to make more of it to bottle and stick in the fridge because it's really good on veggie patties, too. (According to Dan, it's also good on a spoon.)