Sweet and sour pork (lockdown edition)
I’ve blogged about sweet and sour porksweet and sour pork before, but this recipe was a variant to use up some bits and pieces whilst on lockdown. We had a red pepper, a bit of lettuce and some spring onions that really had seen better days but they’re prime incrediants for this dish. I was tempted to coat and deepfry the pork, but with getting literally no exercise at the moment it didn’t seem like the best idea.
Recently I’ve really had cravings for British takeaway style egg fried rice too, which coincides with me realising the InstantPot has a rice mode. Irritatingly I got the water/rice ratio wrong, so the rice was a bit wet (it’s 1 to 1 by volume by the way, not 3 to 1).
You will need
For the sweet and sour pork
- A handful of spring onions, fine diced
- A red pepper, cut into 1cm cubes
- A clove of garlic finely sliced
- A handful of lettuce slices
- 200g of diced pork. I cut it down to strips, cutting across the fibre to make it more tender
- A tablespoon of ketchup
- A tablespoon of red wine vinegar
- A teaspoon of something sweet (honey/brown sugar)
- A big pinch of five spice
- A tablespoon of soy
For the egg fried rice
- Rice
- A handful of peas
- A handful of sweetcorn
- An egg
Do
- Stick the rice and water in the InstantPot and stick it on rice mode
- My peas and sweetcorn were frozen so I microwaved them for 2 minutes at this point
- Pop a frying pan on with a teaspoon of oil and the pork on a high heat
- Stir the pork until it’s nicely browned
- Turn the heat down and add the garlic and spice mix to the pan and stir vigorously
- Add the vinegar, soy and ketchup, give it all a good stir and leave it to bubble away.
- After a few minutes add the lettuce, peppers and spring onions
- If the rice it taking a bit long, turn the heat off, it’ll be fine.
- Once the rice is ready, drain it if needed, a stir the InstantPot on saute super hot
- Add a teaspoon of oil to the InstantPot and then add back the rice, peas and sweetcorn
- Let it sizzle and crisp up a bit on the bottom, then move it round
- Repeat until you have enough crispy bits
- Crack the egg in and stir a bit (not too much if you was viable chunks of egg)
- Serve (I anointed it with chilli flakes in oil and soy)
Result
The pork should be sharp and sweet, a bit tougher than the more often used chicken.
