The only thing better than a good recipe? When something's so easy to make that you don't even need one. Welcome to It's That Simple, a column where staffers and contributors talk you through the process of making the dishes and drinks that they can make with their eyes closed.
As a child, our Sundays were reserved not for worshipping but for eating. After piling into my dad’s orange Ford sedan, we'd head to Sydney’s Chinatown for dim sum, where we would commit various acts gluttony. I was a rabid adolescent, ravenously gobbling up all the dumplings, steamed rice rolls, and baos. For me, dim sum was a near perfect dining experience—except for the cloying, viscous, bright red sauce that would invariably ruin my deep-fried wontons. The sweet and sour sauce of my childhood tormented me: Sickly sweet and unnaturally fluorescent, it felt so at odds with big, bold, savory Chinese flavors that I knew so well.
A few years ago, I felt that it was my cultural responsibility to reconcile with this iconic Chinese sauce. I called my mom in Australia to talk about her sweet and sour sauce recipe, which I remember as decidedly less sugary than the versions served in restaurants. She has never been a great sharer of recipes, but she did give me two personal tips which I immediately incorporated into my own sweet and sour sauce recipe: Add a good amount of ketchup, and also a little garlic.
While ketchup is used in many modern sweet and sour sauce recipes, it is not considered a “traditional” ingredient. Paging through old English-language Chinese cookbooks from the ‘70s, of which I have somehow amassed quite the collection, I saw that recipes call for wild and wonderful things like crabapple sauce, canned pineapple juice, and pickled gherkins to impart that signature funky sweetness. Honestly, however, ketchup is a workhorse ingredient—it really does possess all the tangy sweetness that we are looking for in sweet and sour sauce.
Now onto the garlic. While most sweet and sour sauce recipes don’t include it, I find that it’s actually the essential ingredient. Garlic imparts that elusive note of savoriness that so often makes food more delicious. In sweet and sour sauce, it tempers the sweet, brightens the sour, and introduces an emphatic umami note that brings everything into balance.
For my sweet and sour sauce, all you need are ingredients you probably already have at home (and there’s certainly no red food coloring). Here’s how I make it: In a small saucepan, combine ¼ cup of white sugar, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (I like the fruitiness of cider vinegar, but most recipes use rice or white vinegar), 2 tablespoons of tamari (you could use soy sauce here, but I like tamari because it’s less salty and gluten-free), ¼ cup of ketchup, 1 grated or minced clove of garlic, and ¼ cup of water. Place the pan on low heat and stir the mixture until it comes to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to the very lowest setting possible while you prepare the cornstarch slurry.
