Weeknight sweet and sour pork

I am a huge fan of recipes that come together in 20 minutes and are delicious when served, snacked cold straight from the pan, and as leftovers the next day. Overall, I think that there are no reasons why you couldn’t cook a wonderful meal, everyone will love it in under half an hour. I will say that it takes 30 minutes because you do have to chop the meat and veggies and get the rice to start cooking. Now, while we are on the matter of rice, I always cook my rice on the stovetop in a small pot. Unless, I am making sushi or Kibimbap, for which I need a larger amount of rice, then I bust out my multipurpose slow cooker, or whatever it even is, and use it for rice. But for 2-4 people, the stovetop is fine if you don’t eat rice every other day. I do plan on investing in a rice cooker someday when I have a larger kitchen and more space. This weeknight sweet and sour pork is inspired by the wast choices that are offered in Asian-style restaurants and Bistros.

There are many recipes that call for pineapple, personally, I will wait for grilling season to start using pineapple in my meals, so this is an easy sweet and sour pork recipe without pineapple. I used chopped pieces of pork chuck roast, and they came out wonderful and moist, so I am confident that any other pieces will also work really well. The main thing you should do is to cut it up into bite-sized pieces for ease of cooking. If you can buy small pieces that are meant for stews or soups, those always work for me too, but of course, depends on where you are from. This weeknight sweet and sour pork is really easy to make.

This is not an authentic sweet and sour pork recipe, this is just my version of a beloved takeaway food that I always got when I was little. But even those were never authentic because they were made by local cooks. So I still have to taste the real thing in my lifetime.

The sweet and sour pork batter is made using flour and starch. This is a gluten-free version of the recipe. I used rice flour and cornstarch, added an egg, some water, and spices. It can be made with any flour that you like because you are going to fry it up in a large wok in hot oil. I chose to make it gluten-free in order to really work on other breading options, that are more inclusive to people with allergies.

Now that we have sorted out the meat and batter question, the other main ingredient in my weeknight sweet and sour pork is the mighty bell pepper. Which is in season at the moment. I used a green and yellow one, you can go with green and red or any of them. I like to add green bell peppers because they have a certain bitterness.

Now, let’s go make some quick and easy dinner!