How to make great Chinese Sweet and Sour Pork

 

Once you have mastered this you will have another Chinese showstopper dish under your belt, it's that good. Fresh pineapple on offer - buy it!

Dish description: Chinese Sweet and Sour Pork, medium difficulty first time, quick but requires marination. Ingredients include plum sauce and Shaosing Whisky, once these are bought they last for ages.

I was put off sweet and sour chicken or pork Chinese takeaways in about 1979 by the over sweet over red sauce (so red it reminded me of the flock wallpaper in the Imperial, Balmoral Road, Morecambe that I occasionally drank 'mixed' in) and what it hid. And that I can only describe as throbbing gristle. To me this tin foil take away tray I'd bought offered nowt but what I could only imagine was cochineal, MSG and a gloup of other dodgy chemicals mixed with bits of missing local cats or battered bovine body parts.

So this is a recipe for a lovely authentic sweet and sour pork dish, crispy and not fatty belly pork, not overly sweet nor sour with fab flavour that will keep you and your loved ones digging in without fear of the knacker man.

There are a few techniques to this Malaysian/Chinese recipe, follow them its easy, And on your behalf I watched lots of videos, mostly in Chinese or Malay languages and for a first attempt am delighted. Get this dish right tho and you and I will make it again and again. The two ingredients that you probably won't own are worth visiting a Chinese supermarket to buy. You'll need Plum sauce, which gives a flavour that lifts the sauce and Shaosing Whiskey which you won't drink as a dram, believe me, both will last a very very long time. Whist you are in the Chinese supermarket fill a carrier bag with lots of other goodies and smile.

Recipe and Ingredients:-

First marinate your pork belly pieces cut to about one inch long with white pepper, salt, light soy sauce (light is for salt flavour) rice wine vinegar, Shaosing Whiskey, demerara sugar, corn flour,and sesame oil. Mix well and put to one side or in the fridge for at least an hour but could be overnight. 

Next

Make your sauce, you don't need a lot maybe half a mug in total, so if you are using a small tin of pineapple then about half that juice, add about two tablespoons of tomato ketchup, rice wine vinegar, more brown sugar, a small amount of your favourite chilli sauce, a tablespoon of plum sauce, cornflour. Mix and set aside.

Prep your veg, a couple of diced peppers, onion sliced, some grated ginger, minced garlic, pieces of pineapple

Technique 1

Beat an egg, add some of it to your drained marinade, mix well. Then add your pork pieces, maybe one at a time to flour until they are really well coated and resemble a snowball.

If you are to have rice with the meal start to put it on now.

Technique 2

Add half an inch of rapeseed or sunflower oil in a wok, get the oil very hot, then add the pork slowly maybe a piece at a time (you are trying to keep the temperature - a standard cooker isn't as hot as the cookers at a takeaway)  then fry them till browned all over, turning frequently for about seven to nine mins.

Remove to kitchen roll as pic

These pieces of pork you are going to fry again in twenty mins or so.

Reheat your wok and maybe add a little more oil, again get the oil very hot, add the pork and cook for another minute to two. Remove to more kitchen roll.

Throw the oil away and clean your wok and reheat, add oil, then stir fry the onions, add the peppers, when you are happy with them add the garlic and the ginger, add back the pork then the pineapple and stir fry for another couple of minutes,  Then add the sauce and continue to stir fry for a minute, Taste the sauce, does it need more salt, vinegar or sugar?

Enjoy

Andrew