If you want to cook unusual dish for a holiday or just for home dinner, then try making Chinese meat in sweet and sour sauce. It is unusual and delicious. Of course, to achieve at home a complete match with the dish served in the best chinese restaurants, difficult, since hardly anyone will have specific spices. But a slightly adapted version turns out to be no less tasty.
To prepare tasty dish, you need to properly prepare the ingredients. First of all, you need to choose meat. Most often, pork is used for cooking. Choose tender meat, such as tenderloin. You can also use a ham, but the layer of bacon will need to be cut off.
If you don't like pork, then you can use beef, turkey or chicken for cooking. All these types of meats go well with sweet and sour sauce.
In addition to meat, vegetables are used for cooking. Most often, they use onions, carrots, bell pepper, eggplant. In addition, the composition almost always includes tomatoes or tomato paste... Vegetables for cooking must be peeled and cut into strips.
It is very important to prepare the sauce correctly. There are many options for recipes for sweet and sour sauce, it must include vinegar or lemon juice and sugar or honey. The list of spices, however, can vary depending on what is on hand and what spices your family likes.
Interesting facts: The main motto of Chinese cuisine is the phrase: "There are no bad foods, but a bad cook can ruin the best food."
For a start, it's worth learning simplest recipe cooking, pork will be used for it. It is best to take the tenderloin.
We wash and dry the pork tenderloin, blotting with paper towels. Cut into pieces, as for making goulash, or cut into strips. But the straws should not resemble the cutting of meat for beef stroganoff, the pieces should be much larger.
Put the chopped pork in a bowl, pour in 50 ml of water and soy sauce, mix well and leave to marinate on the table, covered with a lid.
We take large skillet (preferably cast iron), heat the oil on it. Put the peeled garlic, cut into slices, in the oil, fry for several minutes. We take out the garlic and throw it away, it has already given up its aroma.
Put the pork in a pan in small batches so that the pieces do not come into contact with each other. Fry on both sides for 2-3 minutes on each side. We temporarily transfer the fried meat to a bowl.
Let's start by preparing vegetables. Peel onions, carrots and bell pepper... Cut the carrots into circles about 0.3 cm thick, then cut the circles into strips about 1 cm wide. Cut the onion in half rings, pepper into squares with a side length of about 1-1.5 cm. Chop the garlic very finely. Cut the meat into large strips or cubes, as you like.
Advice! To make it easier to cut the meat into even pieces, you need to cut it in a slightly frozen form.
Dilute starch in a glass cold water... Heat up a frying pan with vegetable oil. We spread the meat in hot oil and fry, stirring constantly. As soon as the liquid boils out of the pan, put the carrots to the meat, pour in a spoonful of soy sauce and a spoonful of diluted starch. Fry for about five minutes. If the liquid boils away, add more starch solution and sauce. Then add the onion and pepper. Simmer, adding a little starch solution.
Then, with a spoon, move the meat to the sides of the pan, freeing the center. Put the garlic in the center of the pan, add soy sauce and add honey (about a tablespoon). Let the honey melt and mix the resulting sauce with the meat. Add the remaining starch solution, add vinegar to taste and add the bell pepper, mix, cover with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes. We make the sauce, bring it to the desired taste, adding seasonings if necessary.
Delicious beef turns out in sweet and sour sauce... Let's prepare this dish with.
We wash the tenderloin, dry it, blot it with a paper towel, cut it into elongated pencil-thick pieces. Put the meat in a bowl, sprinkle with flour and starch, water soy sauce, leave to marinate for half an hour.
Cut young eggplants into small cubes or cubes. Pour oil into the pan and fry the eggplants over high heat, stirring often.
Advice! Young eggplants have practically no solanine, which gives vegetables a bitter taste, so they do not need additional processing... If the vegetables are slightly overripe, then sprinkle them with salt before frying and leave for half an hour. Then rinse, squeeze and dry.
Cut the peeled bell peppers and carrots into small squares. Chop the onion thinly. Cut the tomato into cubes, if desired, you can first remove the skin from the tomatoes.
We spread vegetables to the fried eggplants and fry until vegetables are ready. In another pan, fry the meat in small portions. Pour a lot of oil into the pan, the pieces should practically float. Remove the fried meat with a slotted spoon and mix it with the fried vegetables. Add tomato paste, sugar and vinegar, simmer for 10 minutes over high heat, stirring occasionally. Then we reduce the heat and simmer under the lid for another 10-15 minutes.
Read also: Stewed potatoes with meat - 7 recipes
Chicken can also be cooked in sweet and sour sauce. It is advisable to use breast fillets.
Sauce:
Free the chicken fillet from the skin and films, cut into long strips. We clean the bell pepper, cut it into strips.
Advice! To make the dish look prettier, choose peppers of different colors, such as red and yellow.
To prepare the dressing, mix apple vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and starch, stir. Heat oil in a frying pan with high sides, fry chicken fillet in batches, laying out the strips in one row so that the pieces do not come into contact with each other. Fry the meat on both sides, ready-made pieces take out and temporarily put in a bowl.
After finishing frying the chicken, fry the chopped bell pepper and add finely chopped garlic. Fry for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. The pepper should not become completely soft, it should retain some firmness.
We spread the fried chicken fillet to the pepper, pour in the prepared dressing. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes under the lid. We try our dish, adjust the amount of spices if necessary.
Can be cooked in sweet and sour sauce. Fry the meat with starch, and prepare the sauce with the addition of orange juice.
Wash the orange thoroughly, cut off part of the zest from it and cut it into thin strips. Squeeze juice from the fruit.
Cut the lamb into pieces, like on goulash, pour the meat with soy sauce, sprinkle with some orange juice, mix and leave to marinate for half an hour. Then roll each piece well in starch and fry in a large number vegetable oil, fry on both sides.
Prepare the sauce: in another pan, heat the tomato paste until it starts to bubble. Pour sugar with two tablespoons of water and vinegar, stir and pour this mixture over the tomato paste, heat, stirring occasionally, until all the sugar is dissolved. Then pour in the remaining orange juice and put the bell pepper cut into strips, simmer for 15 minutes. Then we dip the fried lamb in the sauce, and simmer everything together for another quarter of an hour. The best side dish this dish will be accompanied by crumbly rice.
I suggest you cook a very tasty dish - meat in sweet and sour sauce. This is a recipe for Chinese cuisine, it very harmoniously combines meat and vegetables with wonderful sauce, in which there is sweetness, and sourness, and pungency. The dish is prepared quite quickly, and the result will certainly delight you and your loved ones. Meat in sweet and sour sauce can be served with rice, or simply with vegetables. Soy sauce gives the meat unique aroma, and the combination of vegetables and a bright sweet and sour sauce emphasizes the tenderness of the meat.
So, let's start cooking? We need: a piece of pork, vegetables, tomato paste, ginger, starch, vegetable oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, sugar.
Let's start with the meat. Cut the pork into cubes or small cubes.
Add 2 tablespoons to the meat. starch, 1 tbsp. soy sauce and 100 ml of water.
Stir, leave to marinate for 15 minutes. In the meantime, let's get to the vegetables. Grate the carrots on a Korean grater or cut into thin cubes. Cut the onion into thin "feathers", pepper into strips.
While we were busy with vegetables, the meat was marinated. We heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan, mix the meat in the marinade and put the pieces of meat in the hot oil in batches, so that the pieces can be easily turned over.
We fry for literally half a minute on each side, take out with a slotted spoon. Thus, we will fry all the meat.
Put the fried pieces of meat aside and cover with a lid. Now let's cook the vegetables. First, put the carrots in hot oil.
Add onion and pepper in a minute.
Simmer vegetables for 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally. In the meantime, let's prepare the sauce. Mix the tomato paste, soy sauce, vinegar, grated ginger and garlic passed through a press.
Add sugar (you can use honey).
Pour 100 ml of water into the sauce, in which we dilute 1 tbsp. starch, mix and add the sauce to the vegetables in the pan.
Bring to a boil and put the meat in a pan, heat for 5 minutes over low heat.
The meat in sweet and sour sauce is ready! Sprinkle ready meal sesame seeds and invite your family to the table!
The meat turns out to be very tender, juicy!
The excellent sauce and vegetables give the dish incredible aroma and harmonious taste. Enjoy your meal!
The history of cooking meat in Chinese
Culinary art in China has its roots in ancient times. Restaurants appeared there 2500 years ago, and after 1000 years a large cookbook. General principles cooking any meat fried in a dish - small pieces, soaking in an acidic or salty environment (soy sauce), breading in flour with an egg, and more often in starch, dry or dissolved, formed the basis of this dish.
Since ancient times, pieces of meat have been marinated for flavor and softness. Then they were fried for 1-2 minutes. Combination of meat and stewed vegetables in this dish it was possible to do without a side dish. Since ancient times, the most popular species meat for this preparation was pork. Such sweet and sour dish pork has original name Gu Lao Jou. And illiterate tourists from Russia called this meat "string". Thank you for not laces. Nowadays, Chinese sweet meat can be served with boiled rice.
Chinese-style sweet and sour meat is both nourishing and light product... Pork after marinating in a special soy sauce softens and does not require long frying. All trace elements and vitamins that are contained in meat are preserved. The vegetable component of the dish is also prepared for a short time, keeping all the qualities useful to humans.
There is still controversy over whether caramelization of meat is needed in this recipe. In many places, a lighter version of Chinese meat is prepared, limited to marinating in soy sauce and adding sugar to the vegetable component of the dish. A sour taste is obtained using pineapple or lemon. There is a simplification in the technology of cooking. It is cooked in one deep skillet. First, meat is fried, then vegetables and spices are fried and stewed with it. Of course, by type of meat, there is a full variety of recipes for making sweet Chinese meat. Up to the meat of monkeys or cats. Of course, this is not our path. Pork is still a classic, canon.
The Chinese dish - meat in starch is called go bao zhou, where "go" is a frying pan, "bao" to wrap, and "zhou" is meat. In English it is called Double Cooked Pork Slices, which translates as "Pork slices cooked twice." Both names tell us something about this dish. Only pork is used for it, in China, beef is more expensive, plus pork is cooked faster, which is very important with the method of quick frying, which is practiced in the Middle Kingdom. And it actually gets cooked twice. This is what I want to show you today in detail, with a photo. For the dish, we do not need any rare products, absolutely everything is familiar to us and is sold in all stores. The technology is not complicated. Of course, if you have a special frying pan in your house - a wok, it will be better to cook in it. But if not, it's okay to use an ordinary deep frying pan.
It should be noted that China's cuisine varies greatly from region to region. The food that many Russians love is, as a rule, northern cuisine. But they can be very different, not only depending on which city in the northeast of the Middle Kingdom they are prepared in, but each restaurant will cook a little differently. Plus a certain degree of adaptation specifically for Russians.
So is the meat in starch. Somewhere it will be sweet and sour, but somewhere it won't. In some restaurants you will be asked how you prefer to eat it, but somewhere they will not even think about it. Sometimes the batter itself will be sweet and sour and there will be no sauce at all, sometimes cilantro will be put in it, and sometimes a little onion and carrots.
In runet, I met many attempts to cook it myself chinese dish and in fact only a few of them seem to be true. I'm not a magician either and I cook chinese food to the best of my ability, but as for the recipe, it is correct, because it was suggested to me by the Chinese.
The Chinese meat is ready! Can be served at the table.
Chinese food has always seemed to me to be something completely unrepeatable at home. It turned out delicious, but "not that". And finally I stumbled upon real recipe, and I got one to one, like in a restaurant, pork in sweet and sour sauce. Chinese cuisine turned out to be not only uncomplicated, but also very budgetary! A hefty frying pan came out of a small piece of pork prepared food... When I calculated the cost of the food and compared it to the price of four restaurant servings, I experienced a feeling close to delight. The benefit came out ten times, no less! Once again I am convinced that we are paying a multiple price for the most trivial inability to cook. It is clear that I will hardly ever order such food. And I myself have cooked pork in sweet and sour sauce three times already. In one week. My husband asks for more and more, and I'm glad. The occupation is unrestrained and very pleasant.
Ingredients:
For sweet and sour sauce:
For this dish, it is better to take low-fat pork, or cut lard from it. It is not at all necessary to worry about the aesthetics of the piece, since we will cut it finely enough so that it has time to be completely deep-fried and does not burn on the outside.
Put the meat in a large bowl and pour over soy sauce. Ginger three for fine grater - while tough fibers remain in the palm of your hand - you don't need to put them in the meat. Add some sugar. Mix the meat with the sauce with your hands until the mass is uniform in color. Cover with a lid. In this form, the meat can stand in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours, but after an hour you can start frying it.
Starch batter on an egg white is one of the main identifying marks by which we immediately distinguish "Chinese food". Although I suspect that you, like me, did not know about it before. It is done quite simply. Egg white separated from the yolk is driven into a large bowl. Diluted with water. And then starch is poured there. It is easily stirred with a fork, and even easier with a broom. There is no need to salt the batter - it will be soaked in sweet and sour sauce.
The most difficult thing for me personally in cooking meat in Chinese is always the moment of pouring a whole bottle into a saucepan sunflower oil... I understand everything - butter costs three kopecks compared to the amounts that we are used to giving for ready-made Chinese food, but so far the stereotype is stronger than me. It is convenient to deep-fry meat in the most ordinary Teflon skillet. The heat is less than normal frying, so Teflon won't do anything. When the oil warms up, we spread the meat in batches in portions so that it turns out in one layer. Keep in mind that the meat immediately falls to the bottom and if you use pans without non-stick coating, tries to stick to it. So you need to pry it off with a slotted spoon and stir it periodically. Cooking time for one portion is 10 minutes.
And then the meat must be laid out either on paper towel, or into a sieve to drain excess oil.
Also a very simple sauce. And his trick is in the little things that are easy to do. You just need to know them. So, take the frying pan. Pour some oil on it. Peel and finely chop the ginger root (1-2 cm) and chili pepper (if you have one and if you like it). Put in oil and fry, stirring a couple of times. Wash the onions, peel and cut into large cubes. (Side size is about a centimeter). Do the same with bell peppers and pineapples.
We put everything in a frying pan. Fry for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomato paste, a tablespoon of sugar, mix, dilute with water. Stir and taste. My sauce was acidic enough so I didn't add vinegar to it.
We bring everything to a boil. We make a chatterbox from half a teaspoon of starch and two tablespoons of water. Pour into boiling sauce, stir. The starch will react with boiling water and brew. The sauce will thicken immediately. It is no longer necessary to cook it further. Turn off the heat if you haven't cooked all the pork yet, otherwise the sauce may burn.
When all the pork is ready, put it in the sauce, stir and heat over medium heat for two minutes.
All! Enjoy!
You can see all the subtleties of cooking in this video: