Tangsuyuk

Starch-battered pork fried twice, with the sauce served beside it in a bowl rather than poured over.

Pork, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

For the pork

• 600 g pork loin or shoulder, in thick strips
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 150 g potato starch
• 150 ml cold water
• 1 egg white
• 1.5 litres oil for frying
• salt and white pepper

For the sauce

• 200 ml water
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 4 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 carrot, in thin slices
• half an onion, in wedges
• half a cucumber, in slices
• 4 pieces tinned pineapple, in chunks
• 2 dried wood ear mushrooms, soaked
• 1 tablespoon potato starch mixed with 2 tablespoons water

Method

1. THE SAUCE GOES IN A BOWL BESIDE IT AND IS NOT POURED OVER. The pork is dipped piece by piece as it is eaten, so the last piece is as crisp as the first. Poured over at the table it is a good dish for about ninety seconds and a soft one after that. People hold strong views about this and the page takes a side: served separately, because the batter is the thing you spent the effort on.
2. THE BATTER IS WET STARCH AND IT IS LEFT TO SETTLE. Potato starch stirred with cold water and left thirty minutes separates: the water is poured off the top and the thick paste beneath is what coats the pork. That paste fries to a shell that is bubbled, pale and almost glassy -- quite unlike a flour batter, and the reason tangsuyuk looks the way it does.
3. IT IS FRIED TWICE, like the fried chicken in this collection, but for a different reason: there the second fry hardens a shell so it can survive sauce, and here nothing is sauced, so the second fry is purely for colour and crispness. First at 160C to cook the pork, cooled, then 190C for less than two minutes.
4. THE VEGETABLES IN THE SAUCE GO IN RAW AND LATE. Carrot and onion for a minute, cucumber and pineapple off the heat. Simmered, they go limp and the sauce turns cloudy; the sauce should be clear and glossy with crisp things suspended in it.
5. AND THE SAUCE IS THICKENED LAST, with a starch slurry, to the point where it coats a piece of pork without clinging in a blanket.
6. Pork cut into thick strips, tossed with the soy sauce, ginger, salt and white pepper, and left 20 minutes.
7. The potato starch stirred with the cold water and LEFT 30 MINUTES to settle. The clear water poured off the top.
8. The egg white beaten into the thick starch paste.
9. The pork folded through it until each piece is coated in a thick wet layer.
10. Oil heated to 160C. The pork fried in 3 batches, 4 minutes each, separating the pieces as they go in. Lifted onto a rack.
11. COOLED 10 MINUTES, and the oil brought to 190C.
12. Fried a SECOND time, 1 to 2 minutes a batch, until pale gold and hard. Drained on a rack.
13. For the sauce: the water, sugar, vinegar and soy sauce brought to the boil.
14. Carrot, onion and wood ear added and cooked 1 MINUTE only.
15. The starch slurry stirred in and cooked until just thick and clear. The cucumber and pineapple folded in OFF the heat.
16. The pork piled on a plate and the sauce taken to the table in a separate bowl.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes