Healthy Sweet and Sour Pork Stir Fry Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the main ingredients in sweet and sour pork? ›

Mix 1 cup water, 3/4 cup sugar, apple cider vinegar, ketchup, soy sauce, and salt in a large saucepan; bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in cooked pork, celery mixture, and pineapple chunks with juice. Return to a boil, then mix in remaining1/4 cup water and cornstarch.

How do you tenderise pork for stir fry? Velveting is a Chinese technique that helps keep meat tender during stir frying. Adding cornstarch and bicarb to your meat during the marinating process helps to coat your meat, giving it a velvety feel that makes the meat feel extra soft.

The Ideal cuts for a stir-fry are fillet, loin and leg. These cuts can be diced, minced or cut into portioned strips ready for stir-frying. When cutting meat, always ensure you cut the meat across the grain. Preheat wok to a high temperature.

How do you make sweet and sour pork red? Restaurants often put a drop of red food coloring to brighten up the color of the dish. You can add this when mixing the sauce. If you don't mind a more natural color, the sauce will get its color from the ketchup and brown sugar.

In a medium saucepan, combine pineapple juice, rice vinegar, brown sugar, ketchup, and soy sauce and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir in cornstarch slurry and cook until thickened, about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and use immediately or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Cornflour/cornstarch – for thickening. Sweet and sour sauce is thicker than most stir fries so it clings to the pork pieces!

Boil the pork belly for about 5 minutes. This will remove a lot of the impurities from the pork and you will see a film of scum on the surface. Remove the pork belly and allow to cook on a plate or rack.

Is velveting chicken unhealthy? Not at all! This recipe, which uses the baking soda method, doesn't add any calories to the dish at all. All the baking soda does is help to break down the meat a little bit, so the texture is super tender.

So many different oils, the good news is you can stick with what you know – canola is great! The best oils for stir frys are the oils with the higher smoke points. These tend to be the “thinner” oils such as peanut, grapeseed or canola.

Chinese restaurants have always followed a snout to tail approach to cooking with their proteins going back, well, centuries. As such, when they came to the West, they would buy the cheapest cuts like pork butt and flank steak (which is now getting pricey) and turn it into something tasty that people would love.

What cut of pork is used in Chinese food? ›

Ingredients for Chinese BBQ Pork

Here's what you need: Pork Tenderloin – You can use pork tenderloin tips, pork shoulder, pork belly, or pork butt, any cut of pork you like.

Worst: Sweet and Sour Pork

There's a reason the word “sweet” is in the name of this dish. It typically serves up 16 teaspoons of sugar, about the same amount in 3 chocolate bars. If that isn't bad enough, the syrupy sauce coats chunks of deep-fried pork.

Sweet and sour sauce is neither healthy nor unhealthy and can be part of a nutritious meal plan.

Sweet and sour pork: how one of the most beloved Chinese dishes went global. From takeaway shops to Michelin-starred restaurants, sweet and sour pork is globally one of the most iconic and beloved food items in Cantonese cuisine.

The dish is served with sweet and sour sauce, typically made by boiling vinegar, sugar, and water with a variety of fruits and vegetables like carrot, cucumber, onion, wood ear mushroom, and pineapple. Starch slurry is used to thicken the sauce.

There are a few sweet pork recipes out there but I've found the best one to be this near-perfect imitation of Cafe Rio's sweet pork. The key ingredients are (besides pork, of course) Coca-Cola, brown sugar, chilis, enchilada sauce, and spices. Accept no substitutions!

On the other hand, in the Chinese version the pork is cut into thin strips, lightly coated with a batter and fried until crispy. It's stir-fried with aromatics and coated with a thin layer of sauce that has a fruity, pungent, vinegary aroma but is sweet and fragrant in flavor.

However, it is believed that the sweet and sour pork dish was originally made with ribs rather than sliced pork. After eating the dish, these foreigners enjoyed it but didn't like the bones, so they modified the recipe, and chefs ditched the ribs and replaced it with a well-marbled pork shoulder.