The world-famous dish that feels like fake Chinese, but is totally legit

The dish

Sweet and sour pork, Hong Kong

Sweet and sour pork at the Michelin starred Mandarin Oriental.

Plate up

Pop quiz: how authentically Chinese is sweet and sour pork? Your first thought, no doubt after a lifetime of stodgy takeaways from the bain marie, is probably “not very”. Sweet and sour pork has the ring of chop suey and Mongolian lamb: bastardised recipes for bland Western palates. But that’s not strictly true. Sweet and sour pork is legit.

To begin with though, let’s talk about the dish (for the two or three people who aren’t already familiar). To create sweet and sour pork, boneless chunks of loin meat are dipped in a light batter and deep-fried, before being added to a sauce of ketchup, rice vinegar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and sugar, with garlic, ginger, sauteed capsicum strips and pineapple hunks. Add rice, and maybe a dish of beef and black bean and some spring rolls, and you have rural Aussie-Chinese nirvana.

First serve

As inauthentic as this dish sounds, there are records of sweet and sour sauces being used in various Chinese cuisines since the eighth century. The combination of vinegar, soy sauce and sugar is a classic (and indeed this flavour profile has long existed in Italian, French and even British cookery).

The pork dish we know today emerged in Hong Kong around the 19th century, believed to be an adaptation of a Shanghainese staple of pork ribs braised with sugar and vinegar. Cantonese cooks created a recipe of ribs with vinegar, preserved plums and candied Hawthorn berries – that recipe travelled around the world, most notably to the US, and was gradually tweaked to use boneless pork loin, capsicum and pineapple, which was also then adopted in Hong Kong.

Order there

There are plenty of options for “gu lou yuk”, or sweet and sour pork, in Hong Kong, though possibly the finest is Michelin-starred Man Wah (mandarinoriental.com) in Central.

Order here

Sydney diners up for some 80s nostalgia can order sweet and sour pork at the Lucky Prawn, inside the Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre (hawkesbrewing.com). In Melbourne, try China Red in the CBD (china-red.com.au). In Queensland, combine with a few beers from the Scenic Rim Brewery (scenicrimbrewery.com.au)in Mount Alford.

Cook it

Make it yourself by following Adam Liaw’s own sweet and sour pork recipe on Good Food.

One more thing

If the use of pineapple in sweet and sour pork strikes you as strange or inauthentic, consider this: Pang’s Kitchen, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Hong Kong, serves its version with strawberries.