Chinese food has been a weakness for me since I first tasted it. Fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, general tso’s, chow mein. Everything I can’t have on a ketogenic diet. If you’re missing the fried rice, don’t fret – you can make an accompanying Cauliflower Fried Rice!
Through the years I have built up a resistance to Chinese food, eventually not getting cravings for it and not even thinking about it. The other day I was surfing the internet and saw a picture of some delicious looking sweet and sour chicken. All of those memories of Chinese food flooded back to my mind, making me crave anything that even resembled a piece of orange chicken.
After that, I saught out to re-create one of my all time favorites: Sweet and Sour Chicken. But to make it low carb? Well that’s a challenge, isn’t it. The judgement? It was a winner! Family and friends enjoyed it and between 4 people, 5 1/2 pounds of chicken was eaten in 1 sitting.
We’ll be using Erythritol in this recipe. While they are sugar alcohols, our body doesn’t actually have the enzymes needed to break down and process it, allowing about 90% of it to pass through the body and be excreted through urine.
With baking and cooking, Erythritol gives the best results, hands down. If you use Splenda or Stevia the outcome will be a more liquid consistency and a different taste.
It doesn’t have any connections to tooth decay, which is great, and it doesn’t have an effect on blood sugar and insulin levels. I’ll be using Real Food NOW Erythritol – it’s made by a mom & pop shop, has a low glycemic impact, and is one of the cheaper brands.
Yields 4-5 Pounds of chicken, depending on breast size.
The Preparation
Chicken:
- 14 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast
- 1 cup pork rinds, crushed
- 1/3 cup parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 2 large egg, beaten
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
Sweet & Sour Sauce:
- 1/2 cup erythritol
- 1/2 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
- 4 tablespoons low-carb ketchup
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce, or coconut aminos
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
The Execution
1. Cube chicken into ~1″ chunks.
2. In a food processor, combine pork rinds, parmesan cheese, and almond flour. Grind until a meal-like substance is formed. Then, drip the chicken in the egg and coat in the pork rind mixture and set on a plate.
3. Heat the oils in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the chicken in (in small batches) and cook.
4. In the meantime, combine all the sauce ingredients into a saucepan and whisk while it boils down.
5. Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the pan and continue cooking the rest of your batches.
6. In a bowl, pour the sauce over the chicken and mix together to coat.
7. Enjoy!
The Oven [Method 2]
1. Preheat your oven to 325F.
2. Get your chicken breasts ready. If they are thick, pound them thin. You’re looking for about 1/2 – 3/4 inch thickness. I started with 6 and had to separate one of the breasts into 2 pieces. Slice the chicken breasts into cubes. Try to be as uniform as possible, but it doesn’t matter too much.
3. Fill up a Ziploc bag about half way with pork rinds. Add your salt and pepper. I add about 1 tsp. of each.
4. Crush them with a rolling pin well (you want a crumbly texture with only a few larger pieces, your pork rinds should be more crushed than mine). Add your almond flour and parmesan cheese and shake well. Make sure you’re using a fine almond flour. Bob’s Red Mill’s won’t give the texture needed for this, as it’s grainy. I use Honeyville Blanched Almond Flour, which is fantastic for baking treats as well – giving a realistic flavor and texture closer to all purpose flour.
5. Put your pork rinds into 1 bowl, and your 2 eggs into another bowl. Beat your eggs until they’re thoroughly scrambled.
6. In a large pan, heat 1 Tbsp. Coconut Oil and 1 Tbsp. Olive Oil on high heat.
7. Dip your chicken breast into the egg and then into the pork rinds and almond flour mixture. Add them to the pan to fry. Don’t worry if your chicken isn’t completely coated. The sauce will help with that and give a nice balance. You don’t want to fully cook them here, you only want to partially fry them so they have a crispy outside.
8. When they’re finished frying, add them to a baking pan. I had to fry 3 different batches of chicken, so don’t worry if you can’t fit it all into 1 pan. We’ll be cooking these in the oven.
9. Let’s get to work on the sauce. Add 4 Tbsp. reduced sugar ketchup, 1/2 Cup Rice Vinegar, 1/2 Cup Erythritol, 1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce, and 1 tsp. Garlic powder.
10. Mix the sauce well until it becomes thick.
11. Pour the sauce over the chicken, distributing it the best you can.
12. Mix the chicken into the sauce so that every piece is covered.
13. We want to put this in the oven for 60 minutes total, but flip each piece of chicken every 15 minutes. After 15 minutes your chicken should look like this.
14. 30 minutes in, we need to flip the chicken again, the sauce should start to be reducing and the chicken starting to let out its natural juice. You’ll see a divide in the sauce with the chicken juice on the top. Mix it in well.
15. 45 minutes in, you should start to see the sauce start to harden up a bit, coating each piece of chicken well. Flip the chicken one last time and return it to the oven for 15 more minutes.
16. Once the 60 minutes is finished, the sauce should be reduced down into a thicker and more dippable consistency.
17. Serve up and enjoy! I personally don’t mix the chicken at the end of the 60 minutes. Just spoon it straight onto a plate with broccoli or cauliflower fried rice, adding some more sauce on top.
This makes a total of 4 servings of Low Carb Sweet & Sour Chicken. Each serving comes out to be 477 calories, 28.4g fats, 3.6g net carbs, and 44.9g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 14 ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast | 655 | 14.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 123 |
| 1 cup pork rinds | 183 | 11.4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17.4 |
| 1/3 cup parmesan cheese | 142 | 9.4 | 1.4 | 0 | 1.4 | 12.7 |
| 1/2 cup almond flour | 324 | 28 | 12.3 | 7.3 | 5 | 11.8 |
| 2 large egg | 157 | 10.5 | 0.8 | 0 | 0.8 | 13.8 |
| 2 tablespoon olive oil | 239 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 tablespoon coconut oil | 122 | 13.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 teaspoon kosher salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 teaspoon black pepper | 5 | 0.1 | 1.3 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 0.2 |
| 1/2 cup erythritol | 19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/2 cup unseasoned rice vinegar | 21 | 0 | 0.1 | 0 | 0.1 | 0 |
| 4 tablespoon low-carb ketchup | 36 | 0.1 | 3.8 | 0 | 3.8 | 0 |
| 1 tablespoon soy sauce | 8 | 0.1 | 0.8 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 1.3 |
| 1 teaspoon garlic powder | 10 | 0 | 2.3 | 0.3 | 2 | 0.5 |
| Totals | 1922 | 114.4 | 22.7 | 8.2 | 14.5 | 180.7 |
| Per Serving (/4) | 481 | 28.6 | 5.7 | 2.1 | 3.6 | 45.2 |
Per 1.2 Pound Serving, it will have 467 Calories, 32g Fats, 3.9g Net Carbs, and 49g Protein.
| Low Carb Sweet & Sour Chicken | Calories | Fats (g) | Carbs (g) | Fiber (g) | Net Carbs (g) | Protein (g) |
| 6 Small Boneless Chicken Breasts | 700 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 125 |
| 2 Large Eggs, Beaten | 140 | 14 | 1.4 | 0 | 1.4 | 12 |
| 1 Cup Crushed Pork Rinds | 320 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 |
| 1/2 Cup Almond Flour | 320 | 28 | 12 | 6 | 6 | 12 |
| 1/3 Cup Parmesan Cheese | 110 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 10 |
| 2 Tbsp. Olive Oil | 120 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 Tbsp. Coconut Oil | 130 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 Tbsp. Reduced Sugar Ketchup | 20 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| 1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 1 tsp. Garlic Powder | 9 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Totals | 1869 | 128 | 21.4 | 6 | 15.4 | 196 |
Low Carb Sweet & Sour Chicken
Ingredients
Chicken:
- 14 ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast
- 1 cup pork rinds crushed
- ⅓ cup parmesan cheese
- ½ cup almond flour
- 2 large egg beaten
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
Sweet & Sour Sauce:
- ½ cup erythritol
- ½ cup unseasoned rice vinegar
- 4 tablespoon low-carb ketchup
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce or coconut aminos
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
- Cube chicken into ~1″ chunks.
- In a food processor, combine pork rinds, parmesan cheese, and almond flour. Grind until a meal-like substance is formed. Then, dip the chicken in the egg and coat in the pork rind mixture and set on a plate.
- Heat the oils in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the chicken (in small batches) and cook.
- In the meantime, combine all the sauce ingredients into a saucepan and whisk over high heat while it boils down.
- Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the pan and continue cooking the rest of your batches.
- In a bowl, pour the sauce over the chicken and mix together to coat.
- Enjoy!
I don’t know if you will see this. I am a new mom who loves to cook but never had the time. Ii am fairly new to keto but every time I break it is for Chinese food. I’ve had my eye on this recipe and tonight was finally given the chance to try it out. I didn’t have rice vinegar so I just used regular white, and I didn’t use flour but mixed the cheese with the crushed pork rinds and added red pepper to the mix.
It was absolutely fantastic.
I almost cried, because now I have a PERFECT recipe for those cravings that threaten what I want to achieve.
Thank you so much.
Victoria,
I’m thrilled that you liked it! Chinese food is my biggest downfall. I used to break my diet every 6 months just to go to a Chinese buffet in town where I could stuff all my cravings into one day. Now that I am really strict about keto, I started converting the recipes over and seeing which I can do. If you have any feedback always feel free to leave it, I read everything 🙂
We made this tonight and my wife (who, by the way, is not following a low carb diet) was amazed. She loved it! Said that it was the best dish she has had in months. Thank you very much!
Awesome! Really happy to hear you guys liked it! Next up, General Tso’s with Cauliflower Fried Rice? 😉
Definitely going to make the General Tso’s- just had a little trouble finding some of the ingredients at my regular grocery store. Still on the fence about the Cauliflower Rice 😉
Ah you shouldn’t be! It’s great, you just have to put some trust in me
What else can I use besides pork rinds? I just can’t handle those lol
You don’t taste them too much to be honest after all is said and done. They add a nice texture, but if you really need an alternative you can use almond flour, coconut flour, shredded parmesan cheese, or if you -really- wanted to get fancy you could make your own bread and let it become stale 😛
What brand of reduced sugar ketchup did you use?
Jos,
I use Heinz reduced sugar ketchup. I’m not sure if there is any other brand (at least where I live). It’s 1g Carb per 1 Tbsp. Ketchup
I noticed that pork rinds are used in many recipes in the LC community. I don’t eat them because I don’t eat pork products nor shellfish for that matter. Can you give a good recipe for breading with measurements?
Mindy, pork rinds are going to give you a better texture no matter how you slice it, but I’ve had decent luck with around 60-70% almond flour, 30-40% flax seed meal.
What do you think about making this into a chicken parm recipe?
Catherine, you could do that!
Is the serving size really over 1 pound? That would fill even my hollow leg!!
Eric, indeed it is! I normally do fasting during the day time so I need a huge meal to fill me up for dinner 😛 This one’s a really good recipe though, highly recommend it if you miss the old chinese food
Hey Craig.
I made this last night and it was fantastic. My only question is about the sauce. I feel like i messed it up. I used the same measurements you did but it was super watery even after mixing for a while.
Is it supposed to be almost water-like or thicker? It was out of this world but still, I feel like I did something incorrectly.
Hey Brittney, glad you liked it! The sauce should be relatively thick, definitely not watery. The ketchup added should give a thickness to it. If need be, in the future, you could always add a little xanthan gum (1/8 tsp. or so) to thicken it up. As it cooks, I’d imagine even if it was water, that it evaporated a bit. Either way, happy to hear you liked it 🙂
Just had to say thank you for a great recipe. Woke up yesterday morning craving sweet and sour chicken and wondering how to make low-carb. Good old google as it came up with your recipe which I made and followed all the instructions as I do have a tendency to wing things. This was friggin awesome. Both my sister and I totally loved it and she said it was a keeper. I did thicken mine up at the end with a little bit of cornstarch didn’t think about using the xanthan gum. Also made the fried rice recipe you had posted the link to this. OMG awesome. Will be making these again. Thank you
Glad to hear you guys liked it Nelda!
Hi, this looks awesome, but I don’t eat pork. 🙁 Do you have a substitute for the pork rinds?
Thank you!
Hey Erin,
You could use a mixture of almond flour and parmesan cheese but the crust definitely won’t be as crunchy, and might fall off some while frying it. I think your best bet would be to just par-cook the chicken in a really hot pan to get a sear on the outsides (maybe 2 minutes per side), then chop it and cook it in the oven. The sauce will still bring a lot of flavor, you just won’t get as much crunch as with the pork rinds. I think you’d still like it though!
Cool! Thank you, sir!
Sure thing, anytime!
Hello! I was wondering how this could be adapted for sweet and sour or “orange” shrimp. The cooking time would have to drastically reduce, as shrimp cook so quickly. I guess the question is how much does the extended oven time help with the sauce? Would it be successful to just reduce the sauce on the stove, pour over the pan-fried LC shrimp, and then cook until shrimp are done? The Walden Farms brand has recently made a massive selection available at my supermarket, so I’m certainly going to experiment with the orange sauce in this recipe. I’d just really like an opinion on the consistency from someone who’s made this as originally written. Thanks so much in any case, this site is a treasure.
Sure thing Kirsten. I know you can reduce this sauce on the stove top just fine. Sub out the ketchup and use the orange sauce instead – you may need to add a bit more vinegar to bring down the sweetness, or cut back on the erythritol as I’m sure the Walden Farms syrup has sweetener in it already.
You could just cook the shrimp (check out the coconut shrimp recipe on the site to get ideas) and then pour this sauce over it 🙂
Hope that helps!
This cured my craving for Chinese. I love it and my husband does too. It takes a while to make, the wait was agonizing, but absolutely worth it. I already want to make it again. I am so excited to keep exploring your recipes. Keto does not have to be flavorless!! Yay!
You are right – it does take a little while to make. I think soon in the future I am going to update this recipe. If you want to, you can get away with just frying the chicken until cooked and then pour the sauce over it. It doesn’t have as much flavor, but it’s super close and cuts out on all that baking time (and painstaking waiting). Glad you guys enjoyed it!
Hi, I’m SO excited to try this next week! Question….I don’t have Erythritol and use the granulated Splenda for everything. Should I still use 1/2 cup or are the measurements different? Thanks!
Kelly,
Yeah – you should be able to use granulated splenda at the same ratio. If I remember correctly, Splenda is about 70% as sweet as sugar, which is what erythritol is. Feel free to double check that to make sure – but using Splenda should be fine 🙂
Hi Craig, I absolutely love all your recipes. Yours are the only ones that come out perfect every time! I keep coming back to your blog and your books…
I do have a question: do you have to use rice vinegar for the sauce? I have apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar and balsamic… would any of these work? Please say yes!!!! 🙂 you will save a trip to the store!
Hey Veronica – thank you so much for the support! Glad you like the recipes 🙂
Apple cider vinegar -should- work in this (the other two won’t work as well) but it might slightly change the taste. Apple Cider is stronger than rice wine vinegar to me, but the acidity is what we want and they are pretty similar.
Hi! Looks like I have granular erythritol, not powdered. Will my sauce be grainy? Should I try to grind it into a powder first?
Hey Kelly – I would recommend using a spice grinder to grind the erythritol into a powder. The sauce can come out slightly gritty/grainy if you don’t take that step. Though it still tastes rather good even if you don’t grind it.
Thanks for the quick reply! I’ll do that.
Sure thing!
Ok one more question… which method do you prefer? Stovetop looks a little simpler… but maybe not as delicious?
I personally prefer the stovetop method (I added this in after the original method because I liked it more), but it does have more “babysitting” involved. You have to be around the stove the entire time (for the most part), so it may be a little bit more active time involved.
Yeah I went with the oven method… delicious but a fair amount of the coating fell of with all the mixing/turning. I bet it would stay on better with the stovetop method… will try it next time! Husband loved it! Served it over your cauliflower fried rice, which was SO good. Finally a decent cauliflower fried rice recipe… my other attempts have been pretty mediocre. Thanks for the recipes!
Do you think this sauce would work just poured over sauteed ground meat?
I don’t see any reason why not – just make sure there’s enough fat in there to make the dish complete as a whole!
Hi Craig,
I’ve been making so many of your recipes for the past couple of months so thanks for this! Adding on to Veronica’s comment about the sauce being too watery, I had the same results. I think this came from the rice vinegar being a little too much? In the end, I boiled a lot of it off and that thickened it up nicely, though had to make double to cover the amount of chicken I had.
Once again, thanks for your recipes.
I find with the oven version it does become a little watery, mostly because the juice from the chicken will bleed out. That’s one of the main reasons I updated the recipe to include a stove-top version (I find it does a lot better). Cooking the sauce down some will definitely help with the consistency, though when I did the stove-top version I went for a much lighter coating on the chicken.
I made this and it turned out delicious… I altered the recipe slightly. I used cubed pork (from a pork chop), seasoned it liberally with garlic and onion powder, and sauteed it in olive oil along with some strips of red pepper (added after the pork was cooked). I made the sauce on the stove, and when it was mostly reduced down, added it to the pork and peppers, and cooked it all a little more over medium heat until the sauce was thick and sticky. OMG, it was SOOOOO delicious! I skipped the “breading” part for the meat as I did this previously for the General Tsao’s chicken, and found it rather labor intensive. I for one did not miss the coating on the meat, and it made the recipe very quick and easy to make. Two thumbs up!
Awesome to hear! The coating is definitely a bit labor intensive, but with pork you definitely don’t need it – sounds like a great alteration. I’ll be trying it soon!
Seriously, I am just dumbfounded at how amazingly good this sauce is, and how easy it is to throw together! I’ve been working for many months to create a good Chinese Hot garlic sauce with Tamari, chicken broth, fresh garlic and ginger, rice vinegar, sweetener, sesame oil, and hot chili garlic sauce. The results have been good, but a tad disappointing, since what I really craved was a good old, sticky intense sweet and sour sauce like you’d get on sesame chicken or orange chicken/beef at your favorite Chinese buffet. This really hit the spot! Problem is, I could eat this sauce with a spoon!
Really, really, really glad to hear! Your description actually nails it – that’s EXACTLY what I was going after because I am the same way.
BTW, I made the sauce all on its own, to put in the fridge until I was ready to cook the chicken. It reduced nicely and was thick and sticky just like my favorite decadent Chinese take-out sweet and sour sauce.
We regularly make fried chicken or chicken tenders with a coating of powdered pork rinds/Parmesan cheese/oat fiber/seasonings. I actually make up a big bag of the coating ingredients to keep in the fridge and pull out what I need for any given meal. So I will cut up the chicken pieces and coat and fry them and then roll them in this sauce. If I can resist eating up all the sauce on kelp noodles or my fingers first, lol!
I was going to let you know about that as well – I’ve made the sauce many times alone and it can reduce nicely into a thick/sticky mess. It’s fantastic!
Hello, would you happen to know if the pork rinds you use are the cheaper bagged ones. The one that are a bit airy. Or the thick one like pork crackling? The cheaper ones tend to get soggy on me while waiting on preparing the food. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Any help would be truly appreciated. Thank you
I like the airy ones more, nice and crispy. They tend to coat better.
Craig,
is there any substitute for pork rinds that you could think of? Pork is off the menu for religious reasons. Thank you!
Sorry for the late reply here Adam – parmesan cheese and almond flour will be a pretty good coating. Sometimes I mix a bit of flaxseed meal in there too.
Don’t the sugar alcohols give people diarrhea?
It depends on sensitivity and types used. Some types have a much higher laxative effect, some have close to none. Though if you’re extremely sensitive, it may cause problems.
I put this sauce on some fried chicken wings. HOMG. They were magical.
Oooh – I’ll have to save some of the sauce next time for this. Sounds AMAZING!
I made this today (on the stove) and it was PERFECT. Even before I ate keto I hated buying this in restaurants because of all the MSG/etc even though it was one of my favourite things to eat. Love being able to eat it with zero guilt! Thanks 😀
I was wondering if there are alternative breadings to replace pork rinds. I personally dislike pork rinds 🙁
You can bread with just almond flour too, though I think the breading will be more dense. Someone commented the other day that they found beef pork rinds somewhere? If you can find them, those might be an option too.
Beef pork rinds?? 😀 😀
I think she meant beef crackling 🙂
Can I use white vinegar or apple cider vinegar instead of the rice vinegar?
Sure! Might change the flavor a bit, but it should turn out.
A suggestion: Use pepperoni crisps instead of pork rinds: Put a paper towel on a paper plate, half on and half off. On the plate half, put pizza pepperoni. Fold over the paper towel so the pepperoni doesn’t splatter around. Pop in the microwave for 30 to 40 seconds. Crisp as a chip! Blitz in a food processor.
Is there a reason the rice vinegar isn’t in the total?? When I put the recipe into MFP the RWV alone had 5 carbs per tbsp. I just want to make sure I’m not missing something.
Make sure you’re not tracking with seasoned rice vinegar – which does have sugar added to it. We’re using unseasoned – which is pure vinegar.
My dude, this was fucking delicious. Paired it with your fried rice.
Would you increase the pork rinds and Parmesan for the breading if the almond flour was omitted due to allergies?
Yes, you’d probably need to add a bit more pork rind and parmesan for the beading if you omitted the almond flour.
I had a question about the sweetener. I have granulated Truvia which is some ratio of erythritol and stevia. Do you have any recommendations for how to change the recipe to suit this as the sweetener? Also, with it being granular and my not owning a spice grinder, is there a way to cook it to avoid the grainy texture?
You could use slightly less Truvia than you would plain erythritol. Without having a spice grinder, the erythritol will always re-crystallize though. There is no way to get rid of that grainy texture. It may go away when it’s very hot, but once it cools it will come back.
Hi Craig!
I’m so excited to try this recipe. There’s just one little problem. I’m not a cook by any means (only super basic stuff like ground beef) and I’m scared to fry the chicken (I’m making the baked version). What do you recommend?
Thanks!
Do what you’re comfortable with but try to take some steps out of your comfort zone. I think you’d find it a lot easier than you think 🙂
Omg this is amazing. Thank you!!!!
You’re very welcome – hope you enjoy(ed) it!