Crispy twice cooked pork
One of the things that takeaways excel at (and that I assume is dreadfully bad for you) are those dishes where chunks of meat are crisp but coated in a spicy sweet unctuous sauce. Crispy chilli beef, gingered chicken, kung po, the variations are endless. I assume a deep fat fryer is involved and thus I’ve avoided making them at home, but I suspected that the air fryer might do a good job so I had a bit of an experiment (always a good idea when friend are coming round for tea).
Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients, a lot of these are swappable and the technique should work for lots of combinations.
You will need
- Pork belly slices
- Four cloves of garlic
- A couple of inches of ginger chopped
- white vinegar (I used cider)
- White pepper corns
- Dried chillies
- A tablespoon of tomato ketchup
- About half as much hoisin
- About half of that of maple syrup
- Brown sugar
- Spring onions
- Soy
- A fresh chillies
- A teaspoon of 5 spice
Do
- Chop the pork into decent sized chunks
- Pop it in a pan with 4 cloves of garlic, a couple of dried chillies, a teaspoon of white pepper, a teaspoon of brown suagr, a cup of vinegar and enough hot water to cover
- Put on a lid on and boil gently for an hour or so
- Drain and leave to cool
- Fine chop the fresh chilli and slice the spring onion
- (when you’re ready to serve) Pop the pork in the air frier on 200oC until crispy (about 15 minutes)
- (once the pork is very crispy) In a frying pan about half the chilli and onions along with the ketchup, hoisin, maple syrup and the five spice. Bubble of a couple of minutes
- Stir the pork in, make sure everything is nicely coated and then add the rest of the chillies and spring onion
- Serve
Result
The meat is crunchy but coated in a spicy, sticky, sweet and moreish.
