Make Sweet and Sour Sauce With Apricot Jam
My favorite sweet and sour sauce is McDonald’s. It comes in a plastic tube with a bright green label and is perfect for McNuggets and McFries. (If you haven’t tried this with fries yet, I recommend you fix it ASAP.)
Like most fast food sauces , this one goes best with the food it was designed for. A sweet and sour McDonald’s is a little different from, say, Wendy’s nuggets, and I don’t think you can eat a McNugget with Jack in the Box sauce (although all fast food sauces are delicious with store-bought frozen French dishes). fries.)
That’s why, while it’s my favorite fast food sauce, I don’t necessarily want to duplicate the sweet and sour McDonald’s. I think this particular condiment is best made with oversized recipes in industrial vats. But I think there are things we can learn from his ingredient list . Aside from high fructose corn syrup, which most people don’t store in their kitchens, the main ingredient is apricot (and / or peach) puree, which makes for an excellent sweet and sour base.
It’s a (obviously) sweet ingredient. The sauce gets a sourness from pure white vinegar and a hint of soy sauce umami. On top of that, you have the usual vague products on the mass-produced labels and some sort of ” sherry wine powder ” I didn’t understand you could buy.
Anyway. I didn’t use this knowledge to trick McSauce, but I used it to make a very nice sweet and sour one that works better with homemade nuggets (or dinosaur nuggets), and you can too. Start with a ratio of three parts canned apricot to one part white vinegar , then taste and season as you like. I like to add to my aforementioned soy sauce – one teaspoon for every tablespoon of vinegar adds just that much salt and umami – but I never make the same sauce twice. A pinch of garlic powder, white pepper, MSG, and paprika have their own delights, as do a few hot sauce cocktails. As soon as I get my hands on the sherry powder, I’ll add that too. You can whip your sauce together, but I love whisking mine with the hand blender to chop up the fruit pieces and make the sauce thick.
Play with it, that’s what I’m talking about, but keep the ratio of apricot to vinegar constant and their flavor in the foreground. After all, they are both sweet and sour . It would be disrespectful to disguise them.