Sichuan cooks make this in a wok big enough for a litre of oil and eat it twice over: hot and shattering from the fryer, then dropped into hotpot the next day where it softens into something else. The batter is the whole trick: sweet potato starch, a little plain flour, water steeped with spring onion, and a spoon of rapeseed oil so it clings.
Sichuan · Snack
Sichuan Crispy Pork Strips With a Peppercorn Crust
Sweet potato starch, not cornflour, gives the crackling shell that stays crisp after the strips cool. Fry twice and salt while hot.
- Prep25 min
- Cook20 min
- Serves4
- LevelMedium
Ingredients
| 500 g | pork loin or belly , rind removed, cut into finger strips |
| 200 g | sweet potato starch |
| 50 g | plain flour |
| 3 g | salt |
| 5 g | Sichuan peppercorns |
| 1 tbsp | minced ginger |
| 1 pinch | MSG , optional |
| 1 tbsp | rapeseed oil , for the batter |
| 1 litre | neutral oil , for frying |
Method
- Cut the pork into strips the width of a finger and put them in a bowl with the ginger, salt, MSG and crushed peppercorns. Work everything in with your hand and leave it while you make the batter.
- Mix the sweet potato starch and flour, then add spring onion water a few spoons at a time, stirring, until the batter falls off the whisk in a slow ribbon like yoghurt.
- Stir a tablespoon of rapeseed oil into the batter, then add the pork and turn until every strip is fully coated.
- Heat the oil to about 160C. A drop of batter should sink and come back up fizzing rather than browning at once.
- Fry the strips in small batches until pale gold, then lift them out and let them rest for a few minutes.
- Turn the heat up and fry each batch a second time, briefly, until the crust sounds hollow and the strips feel noticeably lighter in the spider.
- Drain on a rack rather than paper so the steam escapes, and salt again while they are still hot.
Notes
- The source lists a tablespoon of cooking wine in its ingredient table but its method says to leave wine out, and the method is right: alcohol in the marinade makes the crust go soft within the hour.
- Cornflour or potato starch will work in a pinch, but the strips lose their crunch as they cool. Sweet potato starch is the one that holds.
Ratios and technique checked against 不想做厨子的日语老师不是好男人 on Douguo (川味炸酥肉). The method here is written by Stellaok; the photograph is the source kitchen's, credited on the image above and linked back to the page it came from. No recipe text is reproduced.