Making sweet and sour pork from scratch at home can be surprisingly easy, and the best part is that you can enjoy a larger serving for a lower price than if you were to order takeout!
Why Make It At Home?
But my main reason to making it at home over ordering takeout is the consistent texture. When you make it at home, the batter stays crispy because you don't overcook it. More often than not, my takeout orders of sweet and sour pork are soggy.
Another reason is the sauce. This sweet and sour sauce is not overly sweet like the takeout version. It has a perfectly balance of sweet and sour and it has a lot more flavor because we concentrate it by toasting the tomato paste to give it an intense umami flavor.
Are you ready? Let's start!
Ingredients
Fruits and Veggies
- 1 cup pineapple (highly recommend using fresh pineapple, but canned pineapple works too)
- 1 pepper (any color, cut into 1-inch cubes)
- ½ white onion (cut into 1-inch cubes)
Pork Marinade
- 1 lb pork shoulder (cut into 1-inch pieces)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 small onion (grated, approximately ¼ cup)
- 4-5 slices ginger (grated, approximately 2 tablespoons)
- 3 cloves garlic (grated, approximately 1½ tablespoons)
Batter
- 1 cup potato starch (divided in ½ - can be substituted with corn starch)
Preparation
Chop the peppers, pineapple, and onions (I like to use white onion) into cubes and break apart the onion.
I personally like using fresh pineapple because it's juicier and gives you a lot more flavor but in pinch, you definitely can use canned pineapple as well.
How to Get Super Flavorful Batter
A very important step, that is often ignored is flavoring the batter. To make my sweet and sour pork extra flavorful, I like to blend the garlic, onions and ginger into a fine paste and mix it with the pork and soy sauce.
Once you are ready to start deep frying the pork, mix the starch right into the bowl with the marinade and garlic ginger paste so that it mixes right into the batter. Once you deep fry it, the onion and garlic will deep fry right along with it and give it some incredibly flavor.
Two Step Process for Battering the Pork to Make it Extra Crispy
- Once the meat has finished marinating, in the bowl or plate - separate the meat slightly so they are not clumped together.
- Add half the potato starch over the meat and gently toss it until each piece has been coated with potato starch (or corn starch). Let it rest for 5 minutes until the potato starch has absorbed the marinade and moisture, and the batter looks gummy and moist.
- Add the rest of the potato starch on a large plate and dip each piece of pork into the potato starch one by one until each piece is well coated.
How to Get Crispy Pork
The key to getting extra crispy batter is using starch but that alone isn't enough. To keep the batter crispy after you toss it with the toss, it's super important to not 'cook' the battered pork the sweet and sour sauce. Cooking it with the sauce will turn the batter soggy.
Once you add the crispy pork to the sweet and sour sauce, mix it quickly until it is coasted and then take it off the heat quickly. This will keep the batter crispy while still getting the full flavor of the sweet and tang of the delicious sauce.
How to Make Sweet and Sour Sauce from Scratch
Sweet & Sour Sauce Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons oil
- ½ cup white vinegar
- ½ cup sugar
- ¼ cup water
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
Corn Starch Slurry (To Thicken Sauce)
- In a clean frying pan, add in 2-3 tablespoons of oil, and set the stove to medium heat.
- Add in the tomato paste when the oil is hot and toast the tomato paste for 1-2 minutes until the oil has turned orange
- Add in the white vinegar, water, sugar and soy sauce and mix well and let it cook for 5 minutes.
- In a small bowl, dissolve the corn starch in cold water. Slowly pour it into the sauce but make sure you are constantly stirring it so it doesn't clump.
Put It All Together
- After the sweet and sour sauce is done, and thickened, put in the green peppers, pineapple and onions in and cook it for about 1 minute (you want to cook the onions enough so that it doesn't have the raw bite but you still want the veggies to be crisp)
- The final step is to add in the crispy battered pork and quickly mix the sauce to coat it and remove it from the heat. Voila! You have a large batch of sweet and sour pork to devour!
You can get the full recipe card for this Sweet and Sour Pork Recipe here.
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This article originally appeared on Pups with Chopsticks.
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