Lychee pork
Cuisine: Chinese
Lychee pork is a sweet-and-sour Fuzhou (Min) dish: double-fried pork in a bright red sauce with pineapple. Difficulty 4/5 (Advanced). Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
4 / 5
★★★★☆
681 kcal
Ingredients
- Lean pork
- Pineapple
- Eggs
- Cooking oil
- White sugar
- Starch
- Light soy sauce
- Chicken bouillon powder
- Minced ginger
- Sesame seeds
- Ketchup
- Aromatic vinegar
Steps
- Cut the lean pork into chunks (2-3 cm each), put them in a large bowl and add 1 egg, 50 g starch, 3 ml light soy sauce and 2 g chicken bouillon.
- Stir thoroughly until the starch coats the pork (add more starch if too runny, or water if too dry), then add 5 ml of oil, stir well and set aside.
- Prepare another bowl with ketchup, 3 g chicken bouillon, 2 ml light soy sauce, minced ginger, white sugar, 10 g starch, aromatic vinegar and 200 ml cold water; stir well and set aside.
- Cut a pineapple and prepare 6 pineapple chunks (1.5-2 cm each).
- Heat the wok, pour in 500 ml of oil and keep heating until you hear a sizzling sound.
- Drop the pork pieces in one by one (never dump in the whole bowl) so they don't stick together.
- Once all the pork is in, flip the pieces with a ladle every 30 s until their surfaces are golden.
- Take out the pork, and after one minute return it to the oil and fry again until the surface is deep golden brown; remove and set aside in a large bowl.
- Heat the wok, pour in the sauce, and after 30 s add the pork and pineapple chunks; toss thoroughly and remove from the heat.
- Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
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Notes
Lychee pork is a sweet-and-sour, crispy, fragrant traditional Fuzhou (Min cuisine) dish: crisp-outside, tender-inside pork chunks coated in a glossy red sauce, with fruit adding a refreshing aroma. Lean pork is rich in quality protein, and pineapple contains dietary fiber and vitamins that help whet the appetite and cut richness. It involves cutting, battering and double frying—a bit challenging, but the steps are clear—so it suits food lovers with some cooking experience. It's on the table in about 45 minutes.
Estimated difficulty: ★★★★
Estimated calories: 681 kcal
Group: Lychee pork
Calculation:
Per serving:
- Fresh shiitake mushrooms 2
- Shimeji mushrooms 30 g
- Lean pork 150 g
- Pineapple 100 g
- Eggs 1
- Cooking oil 500 ml
- White sugar 5 g
- Starch 100 g
- Light soy sauce 5 ml
- Chicken bouillon 5 g
- Minced ginger 5 g
- Sesame seeds 2 g
- Ketchup 20 g
- Aromatic vinegar 2 ml
- More often, people in Fuzhou use water chestnuts (to cut richness) and potatoes (to absorb oil); they were unavailable during the pandemic, so pineapple was used instead.
- Min cuisine is mainly sweet; if you're not used to it, you can skip the sugar.
- You can tap the pork with a ladle and judge by the sound whether it's fried through.