This week's pick: Sweet and Sour Chicken, a 50-minute one-wok dinner (2026)

The pick

NYT Cooking's Sweet and Sour Chicken is this week's recipe to cook: a glossy one-wok dinner published on August 21, with a 50-minute ready time, four to six servings, and five public ratings averaging 5 out of 5. The recipe page also showed three comments when checked. 1

The tradeoff is easy to see. You get crisp-edged chicken, peppers, onion and pineapple in a sauce that leans sweet, sharp and savory, but the chicken needs to be seared in batches before the sauce comes together. That is more hands-on work than a five-minute cold tofu dish, yet the same wok carries the vegetables, sauce and final toss. 1 2

Sweet-and-sour chicken with peppers, onion, pineapple and scallions in a black wok — *Julia Gartland photographed the dish for The New York Times; Spencer Richards was the food stylist.*1

Why it rose above the field

Among the in-window recipes with verifiable public signals, Sweet and Sour Chicken had the clearest combination of interest and practicality. NYT Cooking's Tofu Musubi, published August 19, had no user ratings and two comments; its one-hour method makes six pieces and includes a two-day refrigerator window. Chamoy Tomato Salad, also published August 19, had no ratings and no comments; its 20-minute no-cook method is quick, but tamarind paste is a less routine grocery stop. 3 4

Bon Appétit's Cold Silken Tofu With Chili Crisp Dressing was the speed winner at five minutes and serves one to two, but its page did not expose a comparable public rating total. Serious Eats published an August 22 ingredient-prep guide rather than a new standalone recipe, so it supplied useful prep context rather than a recipe candidate. 2 5

r/MealPrepSunday contributed several complete ideas, including loaded street-corn beef bowls and a pork-and-black-bean pot. The available subreddit listing returned their dates, methods and permalinks, while this route exposed no comparable score or comment totals. Those posts remain useful practical references, but they do not enter the numeric engagement comparison. 6 7

What matters	What this recipe gives you
Publication	August 21, 2026, inside the August 16–23 weekly window. 1
Reader signal	Five ratings averaging 5 out of 5, plus three visible comments. 1
Time and yield	50 minutes; four to six servings. 1
Main work	Dry and season the chicken, coat it lightly with cornstarch, sear it in two or three batches, then finish the vegetables and sauce in the same wok. 1
Grocery barrier	The list uses boneless chicken thighs, two bell peppers, onion, canned pineapple, ketchup, vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, garlic, ginger, five-spice powder and cornstarch. Most items are standard US grocery-store purchases. 1
Meal-prep fit	The four-to-six-serving yield works for a family dinner. The recipe page gives no storage window, so the documented strength here is a fresh dinner rather than a five-day batch. 1

What to buy

Buy 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, a box of cornstarch, one 8-ounce can of pineapple chunks, one red bell pepper, one green bell pepper, one onion, jasmine rice, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, honey, low-sodium soy sauce, garlic, ginger and five-spice powder. Scallions or sesame seeds finish the bowls if you have them. 1

The recipe's useful flexibility sits in the protein. The page names chicken breasts and firm tofu as substitutes for the thighs, with one important condition: pat either substitute very dry before coating it. Canned pineapple also keeps the shopping list predictable, because the reserved juice becomes part of the sauce. 1

The cook-through

Set up before the wok gets hot. Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and dry them well. Mix the salt, garlic powder, smoked paprika and black pepper, then toss the chicken through the seasoning and a thin coat of cornstarch. Measure the sauce ingredients, slice the peppers and onion, and reserve the pineapple juice.
Sear in batches. Heat the oil until it shimmers. Give the chicken room in the wok or skillet, cooking each batch until both sides are deeply golden and the pieces are cooked through. Move the chicken to a rack or plate instead of stacking it in the pan, so the crust stays crisp. 1
Keep the vegetables crisp. Stir-fry the onion and peppers briefly. The source calls for vegetables that have softened while keeping some snap, so this stage should stay short rather than turning into a long sauté. 1
Build the sauce in the same pan. Add the ketchup, pineapple juice, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, honey, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and five-spice powder. Simmer until the sauce looks glossy and lightly thickened.
Toss once, then serve. Return the chicken and pineapple to the wok for about a minute, just long enough for the sauce to coat the crust. Serve immediately over jasmine rice, with scallions or sesame seeds if you like. 1

The step that decides the result is the first one: wet chicken turns the cornstarch into a paste, while dry chicken gets the thin coating that can brown. The second decision is batch size. Crowding the wok steams the chicken and makes the searing stage longer, so use two or three batches even when one crowded batch looks faster.

Bottom line

Cook this week's pick if you want a recognizable family dinner with a fresh-publication date, a small but clear reader response, and enough yield to feed four to six people. The 50-minute total includes the extra work of batch-searing, while the sauce, vegetables and final toss stay in one wok. 1

Choose the tofu alternative if five minutes matters more than a visible engagement signal. Choose Tofu Musubi if portable, make-ahead portions matter more than speed. For the best balance in this week's evidence set, buy the chicken thighs, cut everything before heating the wok, and open the full Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe on NYT Cooking.