Peking pork chops recipe
This recipe is from BBC's Best Home Cook's 2020 winner Suzie Lee, featured in her new cookbook Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen. She says, "Peking pork chops are a firm favourite in my household. My auntie Linda would make these quite often at big family events and they were always one of the first dishes to be cleared. Really, the sauce is so tasty that you can use any meat or veg as an alternative to pork."
Ingredients
For the sauce:- 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 3 tbsp tomato ketchup
- 1 tsp chilli oil
- 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
- 1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
- 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 1 small egg
- 400 g pork chops, trimmed of fat
- 200 ml vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
- 2 tbsp plain (all-purpose) flour
- 2 spring onions (scallions), sliced, to garnish
Details
- Cuisine: Chinese
- Recipe Type: Pork
- Difficulty: Easy
- Preparation Time: 15 mins
- Cooking Time: 15 mins
- Serves: 4
Step-by-step
- Use a mallet to bash both sides of the pork chops so they are thinner (this tenderises the meat too), then cut each chop into three-or-four large chunks.
- Put the marinade ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a fork. Add the tenderised pork chop pieces and toss to coat. Cover with foil or cling film (plastic wrap) and leave to marinate for at least 5 minutes, or you can leave them covered in the refrigerator overnight.
- Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan (skillet) over a high heat – you want enough to cover the bottom of the wok or pan. To test if the oil is ready, place the end of a wooden spoon into the hot oil: bubbles should fizz around it straightaway. If the oil is smoking, it is too hot and you should reduce the temperature.
- While the oil is heating up, coat the pork chops. Combine the cornflour and flour in a bowl, then add to the marinated pork pieces and toss – try to coat each piece lightly but evenly.
- Carefully drop a few pieces of pork into the hot oil (fry them in batches to avoid overcrowding the wok or pan) and fry for a couple of minutes on each side until crispy, turning them with tongs. Transfer to paper towels to absorb any excess oil.
- Put the sauce ingredients in a separate a wok or frying pan with 3 tablespoons of water and let it bubble away for about 5 minutes until it becomes thick and sticky. Taste and season accordingly.
- Toss your fried pork pieces in the sauce and cook for another couple of minutes. Plate up and garnish with spring onions and serve with boiled rice.
Extracted from Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen by Suzie Lee (Hardie Grant, £20). Photography by Lizzie Mayson.
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