When I was living in Taiwan, Shredded Pork with Sweet-Bean Sauce is my favorite dish. Its Chinese name means “Shredded Pork with BeiJing sauce”. This dish is invented by a poor grandpa. His grandson craved to eat Peking Duck, but they couldn’t afford it. Out of desperation, he stir fried shredded pork with duck sauce, and he came up with this dish. Surprisingly, sweet-bean sauce works very well with shredded pork, therefore we got this awesome dish nowadays!
Every time we go to a restaurant, I will order this dish if it’s available. Both my mom and I have high standards for shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce, therefore we always ordered that dish but ended up not finishing it. Many say that the skills of a chef are often revealed when making a simple dish. Shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce is one of the simplest dishes, I always found that if they made this dish well, everything else will taste good. In order to make this dish good, you have to have good cutting skills to cut ⅛” thick pork strips, you also need to marinate the pork strips just right, not too sweet not too salty. Therefore, shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce has became my “good restaurant indicator” and it always works!
Now let’s find out how to make this delicious dish and why only skilled chef can bring you the best shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce!
Pork strips Ingredients:
- 1.5 pounds of pork butt
- 3 Tbsp of soy sauce
- ½ Tbsp of sugar
- 2 Tbsp of rice wine
- 2 Tbsp of corn starch, or sweet potato powder
Seasoning Ingredients:
- 1 Tbsp of sweet-bean sauce
- 2 Tbsp of oil
- ½ Tbsp of ketchup
- ½ Tbsp of sugar
Shredding the pork at the perfect size is important. If the strips are too large, the marinade won’t provide enough flavor. However, if the shreds are too small, it will be like a failed-version sloppy joe. The perfect size of pork strips is ⅛” thickness strips, which let you pick up the right amount with chopsticks. Take your sharpest knife, carefully cut the meat into ⅛” slices, and then cut the slices into ⅛” thickness strips. In modern days, we have all these small appliances to make our life easier. I can produce the best size shredded pork in less than 15 min with the help of my food slicer!
Add soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, and cornstarch to the shredded pork and mix well. Let it sit for 15 min to marinate. This is one of the most important step. The reason why Chinese restaurants can serve so many different shredded pork dishes is because they prep a whole bunch of marinated shredded pork and use different combination of other ingredients to create different dishes. Such as Mu Shu pork, shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce, bamboo shoot pork, etc. A bad marinade can kill all shredded pork dishes served in that restaurant. The marinade has to be not too salty to allow other flavor to be highlighted, but salty enough so that it doesn’t taste plain by itself. As for cornstarch, any kind of starch will work well except flour. You can use cornstarch, sweet potato powder or tapioca starch. Starch will tenderize the meat. However, you also need to add the exact right amount. If you add too much, the dish will be gooey and slimy. If you don’t add enough, the meat will be too firm.
Now we want to mix the sweet-bean sauce. The trick is this: Instead of using sweet-bean sauce directly, you need to add oil and sugar and emulsify it by beating it until even. Some restaurant use the sweet-bean sauce directly which is totally a wrong practice. Sweet-bean sauce is too thick by itself. Processed sweet-bean sauce is so much better and that is the key to a good shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce.
Although sweet-bean sauce tastes awesome, the color is not too awesome. We see many restaurant serve awesome shredded pork with sweet-bean sauce but looks not so appetizing. The trick here is to add ketchup to turn up the color. You will see the difference!
At the end, use some green onions as decor. Time to serve this wonderful dish!
The right pork strips size!
- 1.5 pounds of pork butt
- 3 Tbsp of soy sauce
- ½ Tbsp of sugar
- 2 Tbsp of rice wine
- 2 Tbsp of corn starch, or sweet potato powder
- Seasoning
- 1 Tbsp of sweet-bean sauce
- 2 Tbsp of oil
- ½ Tbsp of ketchup
- ½ Tbsp of sugar
- Freeze the pork
- Defrost by microwave for 30 to 40 SECONDS
- Shred the pork
- Marinate the pork shreds with soy sauce, rice wine, sugar and cornstarch for at least 15 min
- Mix sweet bean sauce, oil and sugar until emulsion, ketchup optional
- Heat up a pan at high heat, add a drizzle of oil
- Stir fry marinated pork shreds until it’s half cooked
- Add the sauce
- Stir fry until it’s fully cooked, about 5 min
- Ready to serve
This is just the recipe I was looking for! Thank you!