Easy Sweet and Sour Sauce

This is great for dipping things like spring rolls or prawn crackers in, or having alongside battered chicken or prawns etc.

Plus, when you make it yourself, you know it's not got artificial colouring in, and if you're gluten free, you can choose to use tamari sauce or gluten free soy sauce.

Added bonus - there's no chopping anything, you just need to plonk a pan on your scales, and weigh everything into it with a squidge of tomato puree!

Ingredients

• 250ml pineapple juice (long life, not fresh as the enzymes in fresh affect the sauce)
• 100g light brown sugar (or use 75g ethrytol to reduce the sugar content / calories)
• 80g rice wine vinegar
• 50g tomato ketchup
• 30g light soy sauce (or tamari / gf alternative)
• 1 tbsp tomato puree (15ml tbsp) - optional
  
• 1.5 tbsp cornflour mixed with 2 tbsp water just before adding to simmering sauce, and stirred into a thin paste (13.5g cornflour with 30g water).
  

Method

1. Mix together all of the ingredients in a saucepan, bar the cornflour and water, and gently bring to a simmer over a low to medium heat, ensuring it doesn't burn on the bottom. Simmer for around five minutes.

2. Mix together the cornflour and water in a small container (e.g. ramekin) and pour slowly into the sauce whilst stirring with a whisk, to avoid lumps. Give it a minute or two to thicken up. Taste for seasoning, and you can adjust with soy, vinegar sugar etc. to taste, and if you wish it to be thicker, add a little more cornflour and water paste.

Notes

Many commercial sauces have red food colouring in them, but a natural sauce will not be bright red. Depending on the brand and amount of soy sauce you use, yours will be closer to a caramel/orangey red colour (as in the saucepan). 

If you like it spicy, add some crushed chillies or chilli flakes to up the heat!

I like to cook in bulk so I don't waste ingredients (e.g. pineapple juice), so if I triple everything, I then use 40g cornflour mixed with 90g water, which gives around a litre of sweet and sour sauce as it freezes well - if you freeze it in a flat pack it's easy to break off what you want).