Sweet and Sour Pork
- Total Time
- 45 minutes, plus at least 2 hours’ marinating
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:4 servings
- ¾pound boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1¼-inch chunks
- 3tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
- 1teaspoon soy sauce
- ½teaspoon salt
- ½teaspoon cornstarch
- ¼teaspoon ground white pepper
- 2tablespoons neutral oil, such as rice bran or canola
- 2teaspoons minced ginger
- 1teaspoon minced garlic
- 1½tablespoons tomato paste
- 1¼cups rice vinegar
- 1cup pineapple juice
- ¾cup honey
- 1tablespoon dried hawthorn berries (can be purchased in Asian groceries or online)
- 2teaspoons sambal oelek
- ¼teaspoon five-spice powder
- ½teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
- 1tablespoon cornstarch
- 1quart neutral oil, such as rice bran, for deep-frying
- 1bell pepper (any color), cut into 1-inch pieces
- ½medium yellow onion, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 8ounces fresh pineapple, cut into 1-inch pieces (about 1 cup)
- Pinch of salt
- Steamed rice, for serving
- ⅓cup sweet rice flour (preferably Mochiko brand)
- ⅓cup cornstarch
- ¼teaspoon baking powder
- ¼teaspoon ground white pepper
- ⅛teaspoon salt
For the Pork and Marinade
For the Sweet and Sour Sauce
For Frying
For the Batter
Preparation
- Step 1
Prepare the pork: Combine the pork with all the marinade ingredients, mixing well. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
- Step 2
Make the sweet and sour sauce: Heat the oil, ginger and garlic in a medium saucepan over low heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute, stirring. Add the rice vinegar, pineapple juice, honey, hawthorn berries, sambal oelek and five-spice powder; stir to combine while bringing to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve and discard the solids; return to the saucepan.
- Step 3
Reduce the sauce to about 1 ¾ cups over medium-high heat, uncovered, about 5 minutes. Season with ½ teaspoon salt, adding more as desired.
- Step 4
In a small bowl, combine cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water. Bring the sauce up to a boil again, then stir in the cornstarch slurry. Stir as it thickens and bubbles, about 1 minute, then remove from heat. (Note: This sauce recipe may produce more than needed for your pork stir-fry; use as much as you desire and the rest can be saved for another use, such as a dipping sauce for crab rangoon.)
- Step 5
Prepare to deep-fry: In a large wok (or deep skillet), heat the quart of oil to 350 degrees.
- Step 6
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for the batter; add ½ cup water and whisk to combine. Drain any excess liquid from the marinated pork and discard. Working quickly in two batches, carefully dip each piece of pork into the batter one at a time, shaking off any excess, and drop into the oil. Fry the first batch of pork until golden brown, about 6 to 7 minutes. Using a spider or slotted spoon, transfer the fried pork to a wire rack-lined baking sheet to drain. Repeat with the remaining pork, mixing the batter thoroughly before coating the meat. After frying, carefully discard the oil, reserving 1 tablespoon.
- Step 7
Return the reserved 1 tablespoon of oil to the wok or pan and heat over high. Once the oil is popping, about 1 minute, add the bell pepper, onion, pineapple and a pinch of salt. Stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes, until the vegetables are lightly charred in spots.
- Step 8
Scrape the vegetables into a large bowl and toss with the fried pork and enough sweet and sour sauce to coat (about 1 to 1 ½ cups). Arrange on a serving dish and serve with steamed rice.
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Prakash Nadkarni
Both this and the cashew chicken recipe require deep-frying marinated, battered meat in 2x its weight of neutral oil. These are clearly restaurant recipes: no doubt tasty (and I don't object morally to frying). But the question, for home cooks, is what to do with ~1qt leftover oil, which quickly turns rancid. (Restaurants, by contrast, reuse frying oil 6-8 times in <1 day before discarding.) I would have liked to see a home-cook-friendly version, e.g., for air fryers, or using sauteing.
Pflugerc
You can definitely keep the oil. Just strain it. I keep frying oil, after cooling and straining, for multiple uses. It does not go rancid. Depending on how often and what they are frying, restaurants keep the oil anywhere from a day to a few weeks.
Patricia
I'm a recipe developer, former restaurant owner who deep fat fried a lot. I don't do that at home. I would use enough oil to come halfway up the side of the pieces of meat or the cauliflower, which should be cut to enable the whole piece to crisped with only one turn. Heat the oil until a haze forms over it, gently put the battered pieces in and cook until browned, turn gently, repeat. Drain on a wire placed on top of paper toweling or a brown bag. Keep warm @250 in the oven until all cooked.
Andy
Re:Robert Eisenberg The NYTimes is publishing recipes as they are made by professional chefs. If you don't want to seek out hawthorn berries (easily found on Amazon), you can leave them out. If I wanted generic family cooking, there are plenty of vanilla websites out there for it. I prefer for the NYTimes to show me how real chefs make distinctive dishes.
Maty
Made this without deep-frying the pork. After removing it from the marinade, I tossed it with the flour mixture and then pan fried it in hot oil. Still tasted great : )
Prakash Nadkarni
@Pflugerc: Thanks for the info. You're right: refrigeration also helps. But oil used to fry meats is less stable (kitchenappliancehq.com/how-often-should-you-change-the-oil-in-a-deep-fryer), and unsaturated fats like the veg. oil used here are more likely to oxidize than saturated fats (suet/Crisco/palm). So one must still commit to using up a quart of oil within a limited time: I'd rather use less oil to begin with.
Peter
I’ve never seen a more complex recipe for an essentially simple dish. And deep frying is absolutely NOT necessary. This is why Asian cooking so often involves a WOK!!! It’s called STIR FRYING. Let’s get REAL here.
Kim G
Strain used oil AND refrigerate...
Robert Eisenberg
Hawthorn berries! You have to be kidding. They are NOT available in a well defined way at Amazon. Anyway, they are surely replaceable with a reasonably accessible item. The NY Times should not publish recipes using ridiculous ingredients. It is supposedly a family newspaper with family accessible recipes, not simply designed for one food writer to impress another
klgray
Could this be done in an air fryer? It would certainly cut down on the oil, and make it much more manageable for those of us with limited refrigeration space for the leftover oil.
Steph
According to WebMD (https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-527/hawthorn) Hawthorn berries from the garden variety crataegus trees are sometimes used in food but can be harmful, contraindicated for some conditions, and may interact with some medications. I looked this up bc I have a hawthorn and was interested in whether I could use it somehow.
melissa
and cook for another minute. Add the pork back in, stir through as much of the sauce as is needed to happily coat everything, give it another minute or two to warm through and serve. Tastes delicious and is frankly nicer than the deep fried version,. While it lacks the crunch ofd battered deep fried food, the taste of the pork and vegetables shines through more stongly. Been doing sweet and sour like this for years and have never had any complaints.
I.G. Alexander
Chinese stir fry cooking typically involves a protracted period of time to assemble the mise en place and then a brief time over heat in the wok. This is a lengthier recipe that is too involved for a take-out restaurant kitchen and at the same time Yes I not very mainland Chinese. The two minute time given for searing the pineapple and vegetables is realistic only ôom a wok placed over a restaurant-sized burner. Closer to ten minutes in a home kitchen setting. The first Yes
Pearl Girl GA
I appreciate the professional profile of the prep methods and ingredients. It is easy enough for me to shift from deep fry to sheet pan or to go to a different type of asian chili garlic paste than the sambal olek listed. But I have made a new sauce label Acquaintance and when I do visit a good asian food store i may recognize that acquaintance and add to my collection. For today i am the queen if my own sweet and sour pork which better satisfied my tastes and supplies than any takeout dine out
93209618
The batter is PERFECT and this is all together delicious but not worth the extra effort. We now sub this batter in the Woks of Life S&S chicken recipe for the best of both worlds.
Marie Huhtala
This was delicious -- better than takeout, according to my husband. However, it makes almost twice the amount of sauce needed. Next time I will cut it accordingly.
Mercedes
The sweet and sour sauce as written is 10/10. I made it with chicken because it's what I had and pan fried it. Delicious!
AnaB
Does anyone have a good substitute for honey? The linked article to substitutions doesn't include a good honey substitute and my husband has a severe bee/honey allergy. This recipe looks like it would be fun to try if only it didn't involve me killing him.
Divamom2day
Yeah, all of these items are easily pantry accessible!
Tim
Very tasty but definitely not a weeknight dinner (as I found out) as there are so many steps. I made two versions, one with chicken thighs and the other with marinated tofu. Both were really tasty!
Celia Malinen
Absolutely so time consuming, I will not make this recipe again!. There must be other sweet and sour stir fry recipes that consider we have day jobs!
plund
Didn’t bother with the hawthorn berries and didn’t miss them. Fried the pork in coconut oil that covered half way up the sides of the pieces. Flipped them once they released from the pan. Kept warm in the oven while cooking the peppers, onions, and pineapple. Served with short grain rice and sautéed garlicky eggplant. Frying made a mess, as always, but the flavor was outstanding.
melissa
There is no need to deep fry this, or to go to the effort of making a batter, Buy lean pork fillets, slice into pieces (a little thicker than you usually would), marinade the meat for an hour then stirfy it in batches using no more than a slight drizzle of oil for each batch. Remove meat when its almost done and set to one side. Add the bellpepper/capsicum and onion (name changes depending on which country you live in) and stirfry for 2 minutes until onion starts to soften, add the pineapple
melissa
and cook for another minute. Add the pork back in, stir through as much of the sauce as is needed to happily coat everything, give it another minute or two to warm through and serve. Tastes delicious and is frankly nicer than the deep fried version,. While it lacks the crunch ofd battered deep fried food, the taste of the pork and vegetables shines through more stongly. Been doing sweet and sour like this for years and have never had any complaints.
Cleaning Oil With Gelatin
https://www.seriouseats.com/clean-cooking-oil-with-gelatin-technique I tried this, and it works great! I've saved oil to use multiple times, and it's not gone rancid. I keep it in my pantry, not the fridge.
john anderson
ok. but really only ok. I felt that the flavors clashed rather than supported each other & there were a LOT of dishes to get through. There are simpler recipes out there that are at least as good.
LewW
This was very tasty, but as the article says, there's a lot of sauce. I'd make half the sauce recipe and still have plenty left over. I didn't batter and fry the pork. I cooked it in the marinade with another 1/2 cup of water in a slow cooker for 10 hours on low. Then I let it cool and cut it into 3/4 inch cubes. I stir fried the pork to brown it a little before I stir fried the vegetables.
Julia
This was a great recipe. It sucks to throw away the oil, but it isn’t worth saving it for me since I rarely deep fry anything. I added broccoli and carrots and it was super good. Didn’t use hawthorn berries since we couldn’t find them at H Mart and didn’t have time to order online but it was still super delicious! Usually I don’t modify recipes or add anything crazy, but the extra veggies were a great addition and a delicious way to use up leftover veggies.
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