Sweet and Sour Pork Recipe (2024)

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

Strain used oil AND refrigerate...

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 : )

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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!

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.

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

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.

https://www.seriouseats.com/clean-cooking-oil-with-gelatin-techniqueI 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.

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.

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.

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.

really liked this. the 5-spice made a HUGE difference!!

I have deep fried in my wok, countless times. The advantage of a wok (over a frying pan) is that it uses less oil due to its conical shape. Just put in fewer pieces at a time. I keep the oil in my wok for a couple of days, making tempura with fresh vegetables. These I freeze, and then can take out, reheat in a toaster oven, and take as potluck, with a sauce, to co*cktail parties. I strain the remaining oil and store in a glass jar until needed again. It has never gone rancid on me.

I agree with Robert Eisenberg. Hawthorne berries indeed. So I buy this thing (if I can) and then whenever would I ever use it again. Let' knock it off with all sorts of esoteric ingredients. Not everyone lives in downtown NYC.

Using peanut oil to deep fry is best and it keeps well.After use fry some potatoes to remove any off flavors then discard the fried potatoes. Store the oil in the refrigerator and it can be reused for months.

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.

I agree with skipping the fried battering on the pork. A light dredge in a rice flour/cornstarch mix would be enough to fry the meat first and then add vegetables. The sauce was tasty but had too much vinegar 1 -1/2 cups, if I make this again I will use only about a half cup.