Sweet and Sour Pork
Crisp battered pork in a bright, tangy glaze with pineapple and peppers. Made with real vinegar and tomato instead of neon-red syrup.
Sweet and sour pork — gūlǎoròu — is genuinely Cantonese, unlike several of its menu neighbors. What is not authentic is the fluorescent red version, which gets its color from dye and its flavor almost entirely from sugar.
Real sweet and sour is built on a vinegar-forward sauce where the sour arrives first and the sweet follows. The recipe here runs equal parts vinegar and sugar, plus ketchup for body and color. When you taste the raw sauce it should be aggressive; that is correct. The fried coating, the pork fat, and the pineapple all soften it, and a sauce that tastes pleasant in the bowl will taste like syrup on the plate.
Everything else is the same crisp-fry discipline used elsewhere on this site: heavy cornstarch coat, fry twice, reduce the sauce before the pork goes near it, and toss for no more than twenty seconds off the heat.
Instructions
- 1
Toss the pork with the egg, Shaoxing wine, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Rest 15 minutes.
- 2
Whisk the sauce: rice vinegar, sugar, ketchup, soy sauce, and water or pineapple juice. Taste it — it should make you wince slightly. It mellows once it hits the pork.
- 3
Dredge the pork heavily in cornstarch, pressing it on, and rest the pieces on a rack 5 minutes.
- 4
Heat the oil to 350°F. Fry in batches for 4 to 5 minutes until pale gold and cooked through. Drain on a rack.
- 5
Raise the oil to 375°F and fry a second time for 90 seconds, until deep gold and hard-crisp.
- 6
Pour off all but a tablespoon of oil. Stir-fry the onion and peppers over high heat for 90 seconds — they should stay bright and crunchy.
- 7
Add the pineapple and the sauce, bring to a boil, then stir in the slurry and cook 1 minute until glossy and thick.
- 8
Off the heat, add the pork, toss for 20 seconds, and serve immediately.
Cook’s Notes
- The sauce should taste too sour on its own. Balanced-in-the-bowl means bland-on-the-pork, because the fried coating and the fat blunt the acid considerably.
- Pork shoulder, not loin. Loin turns dry and crumbly under a batter; shoulder stays juicy through two fries.
- Bell peppers go in for 90 seconds, no more. Soft, grey peppers are the mark of a version that has been sitting in a steam tray.
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