Grandma Brown’s Chinese BBQ Chicken

I’ve got to hand it to Jeff’s family—those folks know how to cook. Every time we travel out to Pennsylvania for a visit, we are greeted by a fridge packed with all the homemade goodies Jeff loved most as a kid. And everything is always amazing. 

So it goes without saying that Grandma Brown’s cookbook, compiled by Jeff’s dad as a Mother’s Day gift a few years ago, is full of wonderful recipes. This dish is among my favorites—I make it often, and I was more than happy to have an excuse to make it yet again when I was invited to come up with a dinner idea that would showcase Success® Jasmine Rice.


I’ve mentioned before that Jeff loves and always requests Asian dishes, so of course I have tried many a version of sweet and sour chicken over the past few years. This recipe from his Grandma Brown is my favorite, far and away.

We all love this dish (even Mr. Picky Pants Forrest, and that is saying something, my friends), and this makes an appearance on our dinner table regularly. Thank you, Grandma Brown—I owe you for this one.

Although there are a few steps involved in making this dinner, I’ve figured out some ways to streamline it so that it’s done within roughly 30-40 minutes (including time in the oven). It used to take me a bit longer to get this meal prepared, but after making it probably a dozen times, I finally got wise and started overlapping some of the steps to speed things up.

You’ll start out by coating the chicken in egg, then dredging in a flour mixture and pan frying them to give a light crispiness. The chicken finishes up in the oven, so don’t worry about cooking them all the way through on the stovetop . . . just enough to give them that crispy bite.


While the chicken is frying, get the sauce mixed up right in the baking pan--no need to get a separate bowl dirty. This sauce is so irresistible—I could honestly just drink it straight.



Once the chicken has that perfectly crispy coating, add it to the dish with the sauce and stick it in the oven, then get the rice going. This was my first time making boil-in-bag rice—I used Success® Jasmine Rice, and I was really impressed. It was delicious, and so quick and easy to make.

I’ve always used regular white rice with this recipe, but the jasmine rice really stepped it up. It is so fragrant and silky and rich, and absolutely kicked this dinner up a notch. And I loved that it was pre-portioned (no measuring!) and required almost no work to make—stick in water, set timer, 10 minutes later have perfectly-cooked rice with almost no cleanup.



Halfway through the bake time, you’ll pull the chicken out and spoon some of that delicious sauce over it, then return it to the oven to finish up. Since the rice was so quick to prepare, I even had time to wash the dishes while the chicken finished baking.



\When the chicken is cooked through, serve it over the hot rice and enjoy!


Chinese BBQ Chickenadapted from Grandma Brown’s cookbook

3 chicken breasts, cut into roughly 2-inch chunks
1 tablespoon oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few cranks of fresh black pepper
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vinegar
4 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 bags (comes to 3 cups, cooked) Success® Jasmine Rice


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and pour the oil into large skillet over medium-high heat.

Place the beaten eggs in a small dish. In a separate small dish, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Dip the chicken pieces into the beaten eggs, then dredge in the flour mixture.

When the oil is hot, add the chicken to the skillet and cook for a few minutes on each side, just long enough to brown the outsides (the chicken does not need to be cooked through at this point—it will finish cooking in the oven, so just fry it long enough to get the outsides crispy).

In a baking dish (I used a 9 x 9” glass pan), combine the water, sugar, vinegar, ketchup, and soy sauce. When the chicken is browned, place it on top of the sauce mixture and put in the oven for 16-20 minutes, taking it out halfway through to spoon the sauce up over the chicken and returning to the oven until no longer pink in the center.

Cook the rice by placing 2 bags in a pot of water over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil; boil 8-10 minutes, then remove bags from water and cut them open to pour the rice into a bowl.

Serve chicken and sauce over hot rice; if desired, top with chopped green onions and sesame seeds.


Do you have a favorite Asian recipe to make at home? I’m always open to suggestions!
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Success® Rice.