Sweet and sour pork
Encyclopedia
Sweet and sour pork is a Chinese dish
Chinese cuisine
Chinese cuisine is any of several styles originating in the regions of China, some of which have become highly popular in other parts of the world – from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa...

 that is particularly popular in Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and is one of 8 superdivisions of Chinese cuisine. Its prominence outside China is due to the great numbers of early emigrants from Guangdong. Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout the country...

 and may be found all over the world. A traditional Jiangsu
Jiangsu cuisine
Jiangsu cuisine is one the Eight Culinary Traditions of China. It is derived from the native cooking styles of the Jiangsu region in China. In general, Jiangsu cuisine's texture is characterized as soft, but not to the point of mushy or falling apart. For example, the meat tastes quite soft but...

 dish called Pork in a sugar and vinegar sauce (糖醋里脊; pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: táng cù lǐjǐ) is considered its ancestor.

The origin of sweet and sour pork was 18th century Canton
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

 or earlier. A record shows that the renowned Long Family in the prosperous neighbouring Shunde
Shunde
Shunde District is a district of Foshan prefecture-level city in the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong Province, southeast China.-Administration:Shunde was a county-level city until December 8, 2002, when it became a district of Foshan prefecture-level city...

 county (of the Qinghui Garden fame, and the family was active in the 18th and 19th centuries), used sweet and sour pork to test the skills of their family chefs. It spread to the United States in the early 20th century after the Chinese migrant goldminers and railroad workers turned to cookery as trades. The original meaning of the American term chop suey
Chop suey
Chop suey is a Chinese dish consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce...

 refers to sweet and sour pork.

Preparation

The dish consists of deep frying pork in bite sized pieces, and subsequently stir-fried
Stir frying
Stir frying is an umbrella term used to describe two Chinese cooking techniques for preparing food in a wok: chǎo and bào . The term stir-fry was introduced into the English language by Buwei Yang Chao, in her book How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, to describe the chǎo technique...

 in a more customized version of sweet and sour sauce made of sugar, ketchup
Ketchup
Ketchup is a sweet-and-tangy condiment typically made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup and an assortment of...

, white vinegar, and soy sauce, and additional ingredients including pineapple
Pineapple
Pineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...

, green pepper, (capsicum
Capsicum
Capsicum is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. Its species are native to the Americas where they have been cultivated for thousands of years, but they are now also cultivated worldwide, used as spices, vegetables, and medicines - and have become are a key element in...

) and onion
Onion
The onion , also known as the bulb onion, common onion and garden onion, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. The genus Allium also contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion The onion...

. In more elaborate preparations, the dish's tartness is controlled by requiring that Chinese white rice vinegar be used sparingly and using ketchups with less vinegary tastes, while some restaurants use unripe kiwifruits and HP sauce
HP Sauce
HP Sauce is a popular brown sauce originally produced by HP Foods in the UK, now produced by H.J. Heinz in the Netherlands.It is the best-known brand of brown sauce in the United Kingdom and Canada as well as the best selling, with 71% of the UK market....

 in place of vinegar. Some of the more casual food outlets use diluted acetic acid
Acetic acid
Acetic acid is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CO2H . It is a colourless liquid that when undiluted is also called glacial acetic acid. Acetic acid is the main component of vinegar , and has a distinctive sour taste and pungent smell...

 as a substitute for white vinegar and synthesized red colouring in place of ketchup to keep the costs down, making the dish too pungent and leaving customers thirsty.

Hong Kong/Cantonese version

The Cantonese original is made with vinegar, preserved plums and hawthorn candy for a nearly scarlet colour and sweet-sour taste. A related Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

/Cantonese-based
Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and is one of 8 superdivisions of Chinese cuisine. Its prominence outside China is due to the great numbers of early emigrants from Guangdong. Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout the country...

 dish is sweet and sour spare-ribs (Chinese:生炒排骨 English translation: stir-fried spare ribs) and it is identical in methods except spare-ribs are used in place of pork loins.

Northeast Chinese version

This name is also sometimes used outside of China for a distantly related dish from Northeastern Chinese cuisine
Northeastern Chinese cuisine
Northeastern Chinese cuisine is a style of Chinese cuisine in Northeastern China. Many dishes originated from Manchu cuisine. It relies heavily on preserved foods and hearty fare due to the harsh winters and relatively short growing seasons...

, named 锅包肉 (Guō Bāo Ròu) in Chinese. It consists of a bite-sized pieces of pork in potato starch batter, deep-fried until crispy. They are then lightly stewed in a variation of a sweet and sour sauce, made from freshly prepared caramel
Caramel
Caramel is a beige to dark-brown confection made by heating any of a variety of sugars. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons, and as a topping for ice cream, custard and coffee....

, rice vinegar
Rice vinegar
Rice vinegar is a vinegar made from fermented rice or rice wine in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.-Chinese:Chinese rice vinegars are stronger than Japanese ones, and range in colour from clear to various shades of red and brown...

 and flavored with ginger
Ginger
Ginger is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family . Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal....

, so the battering absorbs the sauce and softens. Beijing variant has the sauce thin and watery, while the dish as prepared in Dongbei itself often include thicker sauce with ketchup
Ketchup
Ketchup is a sweet-and-tangy condiment typically made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup and an assortment of...

added to it, but both versions are characterized by an intense ginger flavor.
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