Sweet and Sour Pork (Chinese name: Gulaorou) is a featured dish from Chinese Cantonese cuisine. To be frank, as a traditional Cantonese dish, sweet and sour pork is not so popular across the country. But it’s very popular in Cantonese restaurant.
Sweet and sour is a generic term that encompasses many styles of sauce, cuisine and cooking methods. It is commonly used in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and has been used in England since the Middle Ages. Sweet and sour remains popular in Europe and the Americas.
== By region ==
=== East Asia ===
==== Chinese cuisine ====
Sweet and sour dishes, sauces, and cooking methods have a long history in China. One of the earliest recordings of sweet and sour comes from《烧尾宴食单》, a menu of the food served in Tang Dynasty (618-907) festivals written in 708. It included many sweet and sour dishes and recorded that they were invented by Chancellor Wei Juyuan under Emperor Zhongzong of Tang when he hosted the Emperor at his house; one of them is the iconic Chinese dish sweet and sour spare ribs. Some authors say that the original sweet and sour sauce (simplified Chinese: 糖醋酱; traditional Chinese: 糖醋醬; pinyin: tángcùjiàng) came from the Chinese province of Henan, but the sauce in this area is a light vinegar and sugar mixture not resembling what most people, including the Chinese, would call sweet and sour. Many places in China use a sweet and sour sauce as a dipping sauce for fish and meat, rather than in cooking as is commonly found in westernized Chinese cuisine.This style of using sauces is popular amongst Chinese who tie certain sauces to particular meats such as chili and soy for shrimp and vinegar and garlic for goose. There are, however, some dishes, such as the Cantonese sweet and sour pork or loong har kow (sweet and sour lobster balls), in which the meat is cooked and a sauce added to the wok before serving.Not all dishes are cooked; some, such as “sweet and sour fruit and vegetable” salad from the eastern regions of China, also find their way in Chinese cuisine. This dish combines salad vegetables such as cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, and onion with a mixture of pineapple (or pear), vinegar, and sugar to make a cold served dish.
Sweet and sour pork cooked with sweet and sour sauce and pork (also known as sweet and sour pork, sweet and sour pork) is a traditional Han dish in Guangdong, belonging to Cantonese cuisine. Sweet and sour ~ makes people appetite! The fried meat is fragrant, crispy and crunchy. With the prepared sauce, the sweet and sour sweet and sour pork is born~ If you fry it without the sauce, it will be crispy Small crispy meat~ ❤️ Sweet and sour pork is paired with sweet and sour pineapple, which removes the meaty smell and gives the meat a new taste. The pineapple sweet and sour pork was born.
How to make Sweet and Sour Pork
step 1
Prepare the ingredients, give the pork a “massage” for a while, pat the meat loose with the side of the knife, and then lightly chop it with the back of the knife to make the meat soft and cut into small pieces
Step 2
Red and green peppers cut into small pieces, onion diced, ginger sliced, garlic minced, onion cut into small pieces
Step 3
Marinate the meat for 10 minutes, add ginger slices, scallions, cooking wine, egg white, starch, pepper, a little salt, using hands toss well to combine everything together.
Step 4
Prepare sauce
ketchup: caster sugar: white vinegar = 1:1:1, White vinegar can be replaced with hawthorn and lemon slices, and brown sugar can be used for sugar to make the sauce more red
Step 5
Pickled, pick out ginger slices and green onions
Step 6
Put the marinated meat in the starch, pat the starch evenly on both sides (do not pat too thickly) Mix the flour with a little dry starch, take the meat and coat it with flour evenly, shake off the remaining flour, If the marinade is less, the meat will If you can’t dip the flour well, then coat it with egg liquid or marinade, and then dip it in the flour. You can directly dip it in starch, or you can mix flour and starch (ratio 2:1)
Step 7
——The first time to fry the meat, heat the pan with cold oil, when the oil is hot to 60%, pour in the meat pieces, turn to medium-low heat, fry the meat pieces until slightly yellow, remove and drain the oil. If you don’t know when When the oil is hot, insert chopsticks into the oil and there are small bubbles.
Step 8
——Re-fry the meat pieces and set aside for two minutes, heat the oil to about 70% hot, deep-fry the meat pieces until golden brown, remove them, drain the oil and set aside
Step 9
Heat oil in a hot pan, add minced garlic, red pepper, green pepper, and onion and stir-fry quickly for a few times.
Step 10
Heat oil in a wok, pour the prepared sauce into the wok and bring to a boil until thick and bubbling
Step 11
Pour in the meat and stir fry twice. Add red pepper, green pepper and onion and continue to stir fry until the sauce evenly coats all the ingredients. The time must be short
Step 12
Place the sweet and sour pork on a serving plate
Step 13
You can eat it without any sauce~ That’s the small crispy pork~ Sprinkle with your favorite seasoning powder (chili powder, cumin powder…) .
To make small crispy pork, you can marinate the pork for a longer time, more Delicious.
Tips for Sweet and Sour Pork
It is said that the dish can be originated back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). At that time, many foreigners in Guangzhou liked to have Chinese dishes, especially the Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs. However, they were not used to spit bones. Local chefs coated the lean pork with starch or flour, fried it until crispy and mixed with sweet and sour sauce. The method successfully achieved the similar flavor; hence the dish gradually became welcomed. Later, the chefs added pineapple into the pork in order to better the flavor.
Story about Sweet and Sour Pork
1. Adjust the ratio of sugar and vinegar for your own tastes..
2. You can choose pork butt (pork shoulder) or pork belly to make this sweet and sour pork. But I do not recommend using pork tenderloin since too little oil contained.
3. To make the sauce for pineapple sweet and sour pork, you can add some juice (the pineapple alone tastes sour, add some juice to increase the sweetness)
