Sweet and Sour Chicken Skillet

Columbus Day week, which the library now acknowledges as Indigenous Peoples' Day, a change I championed three years ago and that the county commissioners approved with the reluctant dignity of people who know they are on the right side of history but wish the right side were less uncomfortable. The display this week features Native American literature — Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo — and I am proud of the display and proud of the library and proud of the slow, imperfect work of making a public institution more honest about whose land it stands on.

Mama has been singing this week. Not the humming that has been her constant companion for months, but actual singing — full hymns, complete verses, the words arriving intact from a place in her memory that the disease has not yet reached. On Tuesday she sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" while standing at the kitchen window, and her voice was thin but true, and the song was the song she sang at Reverend James's funeral, and the singing was a visitation — Daddy in the kitchen, summoned by music, present in the vibration of a voice that has loved him for fifty years.

I drove to Beaufort on Saturday to check on the parsonage. The church has a new pastor — a young man named Reverend Thompson who is earnest and kind and who keeps asking me for Mama's recipes for the church suppers. I gave him the recipe for chicken bog and told him the secret is patience. He wrote this down. He will discover, as all cooks do, that patience is easy to write down and difficult to practice.

James is writing his first college paper — a political science essay on the separation of powers. He asked me to proofread it, which I did with the restraint of a woman who has been editing text for thirty years and who must resist the urge to restructure her son's prose. The paper was good. Not brilliant, but good, and the goodness was his own — not my editing, not Robert's legal mind, but James's own careful thinking rendered in James's own careful sentences. I told him it was excellent. This was an exaggeration. It was also the truth, because excellence at eighteen is not the same as excellence at forty-seven, and the difference is called growth, and growth is always excellent.

I made chicken bog — the South Carolina rice dish, chicken and sausage and rice cooked in one pot, the cousin of pilau that the Pee Dee region claims but that Mama made in Beaufort because Mama claimed all food that tasted good and cooked it without regard for geographic jurisdiction. The bog was thick and savory and satisfying in the way that fall food should be: heavy enough to anchor you, flavorful enough to remind you that anchor is not the same as burden.

When I told Reverend Thompson that the secret to chicken bog is patience, I meant it as a warning as much as a recipe note — patience in the kitchen is practiced, not inherited, and some weeks you have more of it than others. This skillet chicken, tangy and savory and forgiving in the way that one-pot meals always are, channels that same spirit: everything comes together in one pan, nothing is wasted, and the sauce does the slow, quiet work of making something whole out of separate things. I made it for James the night he turned in his paper, and we sat at the table together the way Mama and Daddy used to sit, full and unhurried, the kind of ordinary that only feels ordinary until it isn’t anymore.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium yellow onion, cut into wedges
1 cup pineapple chunks, drained (juice reserved)
1/3 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup reserved pineapple juice
2 cups cooked white rice, for serving
2 green onions, sliced (optional, for garnish)

Instructions

Season and sear the chicken. Pat chicken pieces dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken in a single layer and cook without moving for 4–5 minutes, until golden. Flip and cook another 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
Saute the vegetables. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil to the same skillet. Add the bell peppers and onion wedges and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until just tender but still with a little bite.
Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the ketchup, rice vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch, and reserved pineapple juice until smooth and the cornstarch is fully dissolved.
Bring it together. Return the chicken to the skillet along with the pineapple chunks. Pour the sauce over everything and stir to coat. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 5–7 minutes until the sauce thickens and the chicken is cooked through (internal temperature of 165°F).
Rest and serve. Remove from heat and let the skillet rest for 2 minutes — this is the patience part, and it matters. Serve over cooked white rice and garnish with sliced green onions if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sweet and Sour Chicken Skillet — The One-Pot Patience Mama Always Knew