Sweet and sour pork. Chinese recipe

How to prepare sweet and sour pork or Tang Cu Li Ji (糖醋 里脊)

I present to you a very easy recipe of Chinese cuisine in Zhejiang, which is one of the eight main cuisines in China.

A pork dish with a bright red color, sweet and sour flavor and crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Simply delicious.

You can also vary the recipe by adding pineapple, so you would have sweet and sour pork with pineapple or Gu Lao Rou (咕噜 肉).

Pork is such a common ingredient in our meat recipes that we often think that it cannot be part of different dishes.

Even that to prepare them you need a lot of knowledge and other difficult ingredients to get.

It doesn’t really have to be that way. Without going any further, this sweet and sour pork recipe that we are going to prepare today is a classic of Chinese restaurants that we can make ourselves, at home.

One of the classics of Chinese food in the West, after the fried rice ,  a spring roll ,  the chicken with almonds or chop suey .  

It is a dish that will leave your guests open-mouthed. We just have to follow the steps and we will get a real sweet and sour pork bowl to lick your fingers.

Sweet and sour sauce for final reduction

1. The first thing is to prepare the sauce that we will reduce at the end of the recipe.
2. So it’s ready from the start. Mix with the help of a rod 3 tablespoons of Ketchup, 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sugar (we can use honey), ½ tablespoon of Lea & Perrins and 5 tablespoons of water.
3. If we have oyster sauce and plum sauce, we use a tablespoon of each and only 3 of water. We reserve.

Marinated sweet and sour pork

1. We cut the loin into cubes of just over an inch.
2. We prepare the marinade for the meat in a bowl. We mix 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, ½ glass of rice vinegar and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.
3. We submerge the meat in the marinade and let it rest for 3 hours in the fridge. From time to time we make sure that it is still covered by the sauce (we dip it if not).
4. To prepare the batter we mix the following ingredients on a plate. About 60 grams of flour, 30 grams of cornstarch, 1 egg and ½ teaspoon of baking powder. Mix well and reserve.
5. After three hours we take the meat out of the fridge, drain it and coat it. Fry the dice in plenty of very hot oil.
6. We remove them as they brown on a plate covered with absorbent paper so that they release the excess oil. We reserve.

Cooking and final presentation of sweet and sour pork

1. In a saucepan, brown the clove of garlic and a slice of ginger in a jet of oil. Both peeled and finely chopped over medium heat (5 out of 10).
2. We cut the chives and half a pepper of each color into roughly square pieces just over a centimeter long. We add them to garlic and ginger.
3. When the chives and peppers are sauteed. We will not wait for them to be made completely so that they maintain their texture and are al dente.
4. Add the sauce from point one and lower the heat. We remove so that it reduces without sticking.
5. When the sauce has taken shape, we add the meat. We remove carefully so as not to break the batter and let everything do together for a minute or two over medium heat.

So we serve immediately (better if it is in a bowl) and we are about to savor a very complete dish … And a lot of fun!

I assure you that it is delicious, do you dare with it?

You can see all the photos of the step by step in this sweet and sour pork recipe album .

Tips for a Sweet and Sour Porky Pork

• For a crispy batter and all the flavor of meat and vegetables, try sweet and sour pork before it cools.
• The traditional thing is to accompany this dish with a good bowl of white rice .
• A dish that does not have too many complications and with ingredients that we can find in any market. It is a different way of eating meat accompanied by a good stir fry of vegetables.
• So in addition to enjoying a surprising flavor and the texture of a crispy batter, we are going to ingest a good handful of vitamins.
• Of course, to nail the recipe it is very important to get the batter in its right place and let the meat marinate in a sauce for a few hours, inside the fridge. Otherwise, it has no complications, it is a very simple recipe.