How to make sweet and sour pork tenderloin crispy

Sweet and sour pork tenderloin is a delicacy made with pork tenderloin as the main ingredient, which is then boiled into a paste with condiments such as sugar and vinegar. Boiling the soup is a very important part of making sweet and sour pork tenderloin. If you want to make the sweet and sour pork tenderloin crispy, you also need to pay attention to some tricks. For example, combining water-ground starch and sweet potato flour together and then frying is a good method. Now let’s introduce how to make the sweet and sour pork tenderloin crispy.

How to make sweet and sour pork tenderloin crispy

In addition to preparing the sweet and sour sauce, the key to making sweet and sour pork tenderloin is to make the batter perfect so that the outside is crispy and the inside is tender and not soft.

To make the sweet and sour pork tenderloin crispy on the outside and tender on the inside and not easy to get soft, the preparation of the batter is very important. Although the batter made with only water-ground starch is also crispy, it will become sticky after a while, which means it has become soft again. The solution is to add an equal amount of sweet potato starch to the water-ground starch.

First, mix the water-ground starch and sweet potato starch in a 1:1 ratio, then add 2 to 3 grams of baking powder (only 5 grams of baking powder can be added to 1 pound of mixed starch). After mixing, add half a bowl of water to make a batter. The concentration of the batter should be such that it can be pulled into a straight line when lifted with chopsticks. Then add a few drops of cooking oil, pour in the marinated tenderloin and mix well. Let the batter evenly coat the surface of the tenderloin and then fry it in the pan.

The reason why we add an equal amount of sweet potato starch to water-ground starch is that sweet potato starch particles are relatively coarse, and can remain crispy for a longer time after being coated on food and fried. It won't work if you only use sweet potato starch, because the paste made from sweet potato starch will be very hard after frying, and it will be hard to chew.

Through practice, it is better to mix water-ground starch and sweet potato starch in a ratio of 1:1. In this way, the crust of the fried pork tenderloin slices can remain crispy for a long time, is not easy to soften, and has moderate hardness and softness.

Baking powder is also an indispensable ingredient for preparing batter. It will produce many tiny bubbles during the frying process, making the fried shell not only crispy but also crispy. It also makes sense to add a few drops of cooking oil to the batter at the end. It mainly acts as a lubricant, preventing the tenderloin slices from sticking together after being put into the pan.

With the right batter, you should also pay attention to the double-frying technique during the frying process. Only after two fryings can the shell become more crispy. The operation of re-frying is as follows: put oil in a pan and heat it to 30% to 40% hot, put in the pork tenderloin coated with batter, fry on low heat until it is 80% cooked, remove from the pan when the surface turns slightly yellow, then increase the oil temperature to 70% hot, add the pork tenderloin and re-fry on high heat for 1 minute, remove from the pan when the surface turns golden brown.

Since tenderloin can easily be overcooked, the oil temperature and time must be controlled well. Generally speaking, you can put the pork tenderloin in when the oil is 30% hot. Kitchen novices who cannot accurately judge the oil temperature can also put a piece of meat into the pan first. If the meat floats up immediately with small bubbles around it, it means the oil temperature is just right.

Because the tenderloin will be fried twice, the first frying time does not need to be too long. You can take it out when the surface of the batter turns slightly golden brown. When re-frying, raise the oil temperature to 70% hot, fry the tenderloin for 1 minute, and remove from the pan when it turns golden brown.

Additional note: This batter preparation method is not only suitable for sweet and sour pork tenderloin, but can also be used for other dishes that require battering and need to keep the crust crispy for a long time and not easy to soften.