Sweet & Sour Carrots

 Sweet & Sour Carrots

    Today's lunch was another recipe from the Highland Park United Methodist Church (Dallas, Texas) Jubilee of our Many Blessings Cookbook. Printed 30 years ago this year. This is a vegetarian dish. If there is a substitute you can find for soy sauce, it could also be vegan. You could also add chunks of boneless chicken breast or pork loin if you have to have meat. That would be a good way to stretch this to more servings. 

    I adapted the recipe, by adding an extra tablespoon of vinegar. The original uses 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 1/3 cup vinegar. It was pretty easy to make. The recipe calls for "scraping" the carrots which I thought was a cute way of saying "peel the carrots", before cutting them in 1 inch diagonals.   Cook the carrots in water until just tender before adding the green pepper, which is cut into 1 inch squares, and cooking another 3 minutes. I didn't cut 1 inch squares, I did small, but chunky (like me) pieces.  Set aside your cooked vegetables and make a sauce out of 1/2 cup of pineapple juice (reserved when you drain your pineapple chunks), sugar, cornstarch, vinegar, soy sauce and salt. Cook the sauce until it boils, stirring constantly. Stir in the pineapple chunks and add your vegetables; stir to coat the vegetables and pineapple with the sauce and heat through. Serve with cooked rice (I used brown rice) and sprinkle with red pepper chili flakes if desired. This serves between 4 and 6 people.  The original recipe was submitted by Gerty Keim McKelvy (Mrs. George McKelvy). 

    The verdict?  I'm glad I added the extra vinegar, because I liked that little, extra kick of "sour". The sugar was fine; it wasn't super sweet, which I liked.  The recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of soy sauce.  I used a packet of soy sauce I had gotten with some Chinese food recently.  It was about 2 teaspoons.  Feel free to use low-sodium soy sauce and/or use a salt substitute if you are watching your sodium intake. Would I make this again?  Yes, I would. It was good and filling with the brown rice I made. 

Let me know what you think. 

Ingredients:

1 pound carrots

1 large green pepper 

1 8oz can pineapple chunks

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vinegar ( (Again, I adapted and used 3 tablespoons)

2 teaspoons (or 1 packet of Chinese take-out soy sauce)

Red pepper chili flakes (optional)