Sweet and sour chicken

I cooked sweet and sour chicken again yesterday, this time using the slow cooker as opposed to the wok version from last week.

Initially I marinaded the chicken cubes with pineapple cubes in the fridge overnight; these I removed from the fridge and placed in the slow cooker without turning it on, allowing the chicken to achieve room temperature. On the stove, I created the sauce - pineapple juice, vinegar, brown sugar, water and ground ginger. Once this mixture was clear and started to boil, I poured it into the slow cooker, and turned the cooker's heat to high. After an hour of high heat, I added a bowl of chopped red, yellow and green peppers, along with a little ketchup. After another two hours of high heat, I reduced the cooker's heat to low, and added a cup of hot water in which I had dissolved corn flour starch. I left this mixture for about another hour on low heat, during which I cooked rice. I served the chicken mixture on top of the rice. I did take a picture of the meal on my cell phone intending to show it here but the picture didn't come out well technically (too grainy).

The vegetables were superb; the sauce was very tasty and combined well with the rice but my wife complained that the chicken was too dry - maybe she means over-cooked. The chicken was ok, but could have been better. I think that it needs a little protection - the batter.

I think that I'm going to try a compromise. Because my time is somewhat limited on a Friday (I only come home from studying at 3pm; we eat at 7pm and I normally have an hour's nap after returning home), I'm going to fry chicken pieces in batter on Thursday night and then cook them in the slow cooker on Friday afternoon.

Last time I wrote that I don't like deep frying without giving too many reasons. It turns out that there is a good wiki on the subject which gives the reasons why I dislike deep frying

• What does one do with the oil afterwards?
• It's dangerous (see Ian Rankin's "Rebus" books in which he mentions how easy it is to commit arson - someone comes home drunk, late at night, puts the chip pan on the stove to heat up then falls asleep on the couch. Meanwhile the oil in the chip pan rises in temperature until it catches alight - and then the house burns down)

I did briefly check out electrical deep fryers - these should be thermostatically controlled and thus safer - but the smallest capacity that I could find was two and a half litres oil, and that's far too much. I'm going to fry the chicken batter mixture in an ordinary frying pan, but not cram too much chicken in at one go, as I did with the wok. This way the batter layer will be more complete.