Crisp Chinese pork belly
This mouth-watering pork belly dish with crispy crackling is great for entertaining and so easy to make. Serve with our four ingredient dipping sauce
Sweet & sour pork
- Preparation and cooking time
- Prep:
- Cook:
- Plus chilling
- More effort
- Serves 4
Skip to ingredients
Ingredients
- 1 pork fillet (about 500g), trimmed and cut into 3cm chunks
- sunflower or vegetable oil, for deep-frying
- cooked rice or noodles, to serve
For the marinade
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 2 tbsp shoaxing rice wine or dry sherry
- 1 garlic clove, grated
- thumb-sized piece ginger, grated
For the coating
- 50g cornflour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground white pepper
- 2 tsp celery salt
- 2 tsp caster sugar
For the sauce
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- thumb-sized piece ginger, chopped
- 1 green or red pepper, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp tomato ketchup
- 4 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp soft brown sugar
- 300g can pineapple chunks
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
For the batter
- 100g rice flour
- 100g cornflour
- 1 tsp baking powder
Method
- STEP 1
Mix the pork with the marinade ingredients and leave to sit for at least 15 mins, or chill for a few hours. In a separate bowl, mix all the coating ingredients. Drain any excess liquid off the pork and toss the pork in the seasoned coating. Can be done 1 hr ahead.
- STEP 2
To make the sauce, heat the oil in a shallow saucepan and gently fry the garlic, ginger and peppers until just starting to soften. Now drop in all the rest of the ingredients except the sesame seeds. Bring everything to the boil and cook for a few mins until thickened, then take off the heat. To make the batter, whisk the flours and baking powder together with 200ml water to a smooth paste.
- STEP 3
Heat the oil in a deep-fat fryer, large saucepan or a wok to 180C or until a drop of batter sizzles and browns in 20 secs. Dip the marinated pork in the batter mix (do it in two or three batches) and let any excess drip off. Fry the pork in batches for about 5-6 mins or until golden. Remove and drain on kitchen paper until all the batches are done. Make sure you bring the oil back to the correct temperature between each batch. Coat the crispy pork in the sauce, then sprinkle over the sesame seeds, coriander and serve with rice or noodles.
