Ingredients
- Pork loin or tenderloin
- A starch batter
- Vinegar and sugar
- Carrot and scallion for crunch, sometimes
- Soy, ginger, and garlic
How it is cooked
- The pork is sliced, battered, and fried twice so it blisters.
- A thin sauce of vinegar and sugar is cooked with aromatics.
- The pork is tossed in the sauce just before it is served, so the crust survives.
- It should crack when you bite it. A version sitting in a pool of syrup has waited too long.
Taste
Sharp, sweet, and crunchy. More vinegar than the orange takeaway dishes many visitors know. The pork should taste like pork under the crust.
Possible allergens
- Wheat in the noodles or wrappers, and often in soy sauce.
- The batter is wheat or a wheat-starch mix.
- Soy sauce, which in China is often brewed with wheat.
- Pork.
- Garlic and vinegar. Peanut oil is a possible frying fat.
- A shared wok or a house chili oil can add peanut, sesame, or shellfish even when the recipe does not.