Sweet and sour pork

If you have some extra time and a lot of saucepans at your disposal, then prepare this sweet and sour pork for dinner. It is pretty time consuming - for a second I already though why on earth I just didn’t buy the sauce mix from the supermarket - but at the end I was pretty satisfied, cause it turned out very well. You can find many different recipes in the Internet, I used this one as a basis and highly recommend it, as the dish comes out just as you were in a Chinese restaurant. You’ll get three portions from the following ingredients:

400 g boneless pork loins

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 egg white

olive oil

2 tbsp cornstarch

 

# Place cubed pork in a medium bowl. 

# Mix salt, sugar, soy sauce and lightly beaten egg white and pour over pork. Cover, and place in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

# Heat oil in a large saucepan. Coat the pork with cornstarch (to coat evenly, it might be easier to stick the cornstarch in a bag and add the pork, close the top and shake it around) and fry about 10 minutes, until evenly browned. Drain on paper towels.  

olive oil

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

1 carrot, julienned

sugar and salt 

 

# Heat oil in a wok or a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the celery, bell pepper, and onion, season with salt and sugar.

# Cook until tender. Remove from heat, and set aside.

150 ml water

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

50 ml cider vinegar

2 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp soy sauce

125 g pineapple chunks (canned, undrained)

1 tbsp cornstarch

 

# Mix six first ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to boil.

# Add corntstarch and continue simmering until sauce thickens. 

# Stir in pineapple chunks with juice, simmer for another few minutes and finally add cooked pork and vegetables.

# Serve immediately (in case you prepare it too early, you’ll probably end up eating it alone in the kitchen before the dinner, because it smells so good) with rice.

You can substitute pork with chicken fillet - should turn out just as good. Leftovers (in case you’ll have any) reheat fine too.

17.04.08: Today I prepared the same dish and followed the recipe as it stands and I must say the dish came out a bit salty. I was pretty disappointed….but I guess it depends on what kind of soy sauce you are using - the first time I had a bottle of “light soy sauce” which probably wasn’t that salty as the one I used today (and I should have noticed it myself, when the sign in the bottle said something like “supreme dark” sauce…). So, I have made a correction in the recipe and deleted the salt in the marinade - after all, it is always easier to add it later on than to take it back…