How to pep up sweet & sour sauce?

[FlatShoesOnly]

Made chicken sweet and sour to a recipe tonight and have half left for the freezer. It was nice and smelt good but lacked zing when eaten.

The sauce was made with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, pineapple juice, honey and white wine vinegar and thickened with cornflour.

What can I put in to make it more tasty?

Where's the orange juice? That's the first ingredient!

This is the best recipe IMO

Sweet & Sour Chicken ~ Cantonese Style
Tangy, crispy, and better than takeaway.

300 g Chicken Breast chopped into 2cm cubes
½ Cup Corn Flour
Groundnut Oil for frying
1 Egg beaten
¼ tsp Salt

Ingredients for Sweet and Sour sauce
Corn flour slurry 3tbsp corn flour mixed with 6 tbsp water
1 cup orange juice
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
½ red pepper chopped quite chunky
½ small onion chopped quite chunky
1 handful pineapple chunks
Instructions

Making the Sauce
Place a large saucepan on a medium heat and add all the sauce ingredients, except for the corn flour slurry.
Bring to the boil and then simmer for five minutes.
Slowly stir the corn flour into the sauce, a little at a time, until you have the desired consistency. Leave to one side.

Cooking the Chicken
In a large saucepan heat the oil to 170c, the oil need enough so the Chicken can float in the oil without touching the bottom of the pan.
Place chicken into a large bowl, add the beaten egg, a pinch of salt and mix well.
In another large bowl add the cornflour, dredge each piece of chicken in the flour and bang off excess.
Gently drop the chicken into the oil and fry for around 5 minutes or until completely cooked (if you have a food thermometer probe the internal temperature should be 75c).
Remove chicken and drain over a wire rack.
Arrange chicken on a plate and spoon over your sweet and sour sauce and serve.

manwithawok.com/sweet-and-sour-chicken-hong-kong-style/

Vinegar looses it's zing very quickly when heated so your white wine vinegar might not be doing much zinging. If you have it, I'd drop in a bit of rice vinegar or even malt vinegar. If I'm freezing sauces with vinegar in I add extra before freezing to compensate for the reheating.

The one I do from a lovely Mumsneter from the distant past...

6tbsp each of rice vinegar, tomato ketchup and sugar
Add tblsp each of rice wine and light soy
Tsp of dark soy
Good pinch of five spice and white pepper

The best version is where you marinade the pork / chicken/ beef in a tblsp of light soy, a tblsp of rice wine, tap dark soy, tsp of sesame oil, tsp of cornflour, pinch each of five spice, bicarbonate and white pepper. Leave for an hour or so then add 2-300g of cornflour, add an egg. Mush it together until the meat is coated... Not all the corn flour will be used. Fry the meat ( deep fried is best).

Then in a really hot wok fry a cubed onion and green pepper until the edges are charred, add finely grated ginger, garlic and white of one spring onion, fry briefly. Add the sweet and sour sauce and bring to the boil. Add the fried meat and heat through.

Tomato ketchup......

Or tomato puree and more vinegar, but ketchup is better.