Sweet and sour - what do you call it?

[abcdefg]

I tried making sweet and sour pork ribs 糖醋排骨 a couple weeks ago since it's a dish I sometimes enjoy when eating out. What a difficult project! I followed a recipe that called for deep frying the cut ribs after first parboiling them. Finally they were stir-fried with the sweet/sour sauce. Way too much labor and way too much mess to clean up. If I ever attempt them again, I'll use an alternate approach. 

[somethingfunny]

I did 糖醋里脊 once and found it similarly 麻烦.  I think I deep fried them once to ensure the meat was cooked, then put them to one side while I made the sauce and then deep-fried them again at a higher temperature to get the correct colour.

 

I added it to the list of things that are just better to have in a restaurant.  There is criteria for this:

1. Difficult to cook.

2. Doesn't necessarily taste better when you make it yourself.

3. Is horrendously unhealthy.

 

I think all the dishes being discussed here fulfill all three of these requirements quite easily.

[imron]

4 hours ago, 889 said:

You'll sometimes find 糖醋雞柳 at 清真 restaurants.

Yep.  I also used to regularly order 糖醋鸡丝 at ordinary restaurants also.  Never had complaints about it from the waitstaff or chefs either :-)

[imron]

2 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

3. Is horrendously unhealthy.

Many of your favourite restaurant dishes in China will have handfuls of sugar thrown in.  Literally handfuls, I took some cooking classes in Bejing many years back and the chef doing the teaching would say things like "and now you grab two handfuls of sugar" and then add them to the dish.

[somethingfunny]

5 minutes ago, imron said:

"and now you grab two handfuls and sugar"

Sounds delicious.  Throw in a heaped teaspoon of 味精 and I'm good to go.

 

I once took some cooking classes in Chengdu and the line there was "if it isn't served with a pool of oil around it then it's not been cooked properly."  Again, that's literally what he said.

[889]

Sugar -- lots of sugar -- is indeed the killer secret ingredient in 北京菜, even in dishes that don't taste obviously sweet. It's an easy shortcut to spark up a meal. But really really good chiefs don't need handfuls of the stuff to make their dishes tasty, and the sugar factor's actually a good quick way to gauge the quality of a restaurant.

 

Of course, sugar's a relatively recent arrival in the Chinese kitchen, so none of these sweet dishes are traditional in historic terms.

[anonymoose]

I usually just use 酸甜 to refer to sweet and sour, although I know specific dishes have their own names, such as 咕咾肉.

[abcdefg]

11 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

I added it to the list of things that are just better to have in a restaurant.  There is criteria for this:

1. Difficult to cook.

2. Doesn't necessarily taste better when you make it yourself.

3. Is horrendously unhealthy.

 

Agree 100%. I have a similar mental list. And despite some of the things on it being my favorites, I don't attempt them at home. Roast duck 烤鸭 for example.  

 

And there are lots and lots of things that call out to me here in Kunming as members of the "other" list. I'm referring to things that are easy to cook, often making use of top-quality fresh seasonal ingredients, and taste great when given a personal touch.

 

Hmm -- Don't want to derail this current topic -- I'll start a new thread.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

 

Here: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/55472-what-chinese-food-do-you-like-to-cook-at-home/

 

[abcdefg]

merged

[Christa]

Sorry for going back to this. But I just had one more question.

 

What seems to you the more commonly used of the two names: 咕咾肉 or 咕嚕肉?

[imron]

19 minutes ago, Christa said:

咕嚕肉?

Never seen this one.

[Christa]

5 minutes ago, imron said:

Never seen this one.

 

That's useful to hear. Thanks.

 

Anyone else?

 

 

[陳德聰]

When I turn my Canto brain on I get it lol. 咕嚕 and 咕咾 sound more similar then.

[Christa]

11 minutes ago, 陳德聰 said:

When I turn my Canto brain on I get it lol. 咕嚕 and 咕咾 sound more similar then.

 

They are Cantonese terms, aren't they? This is why the second character in each seems to be modified in an unfamiliar way for mandarin speakers. Do you think that's right?

 

Which one do you see more often?

[abcdefg]

 

8 hours ago, Christa said:

What seems to you the more commonly used of the two names: 咕咾肉 or 咕嚕肉?

 

@Christa -- I could be mistaken since I've never made either one,  but I found recipes for both on-line this morning. Reading through several for each dish suggests that 咕噜肉 is more often used by Cantonese chefs, while 古老肉 is more often used by cooks elsewhere in China. 

 

Both give the pork a "sweet and sour" treatment, though the approach to how it is done can differ. The most common approach seems to be to pound the meat thin, bread it and fry it prior to finishing it in a sweet and sour sauce. 

 

Please take this with a grain of salt, since I might be reading too much into it and I lack the first-hand experience to be certain. But as a practical matter, if the restaurant in which you are dining was stumped by  your asking for one of these, you could just turn around and ask for the other and be reasonably confident of getting something along the lines of what you were seeking. 

 

During my own early days in China, I considered it a triumph to order a glass of milk and not receive tea or Coca Cola. I remember once (in Dalian) ordering zhou 粥 at breakfast and the puzzled waitress eventually bringing me a plate of fried meat 肉 rou. It was a telling comment on the sorry state of my pronunciation that 粥 and 肉 would come out so similar.  

 

I'm sure it caused some animated discussion in the kitchen regarding the savage breakfast habits of western foreigners. "Yes, Zhang, I swear to you it's true, I wouldn't have believed it before now either. Those westerners eat meat three times a day, usually accompanied by bread and beer." 

 

 

[lips]

On 12/1/2017 at 6:26 PM, Publius said:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/咕嚕肉

原名古滷肉，因其滷汁可循環使用而成古滷

 

Personally I don't think this is correct, as there is no 滷汁 in 咕嚕肉.  The following version may be more plausible:

 

说法一，这道菜式甜酸开味，端上桌时香气四溢，令人禁不住咕噜咕噜地吞咽口水，因而得名；
说法二，这道菜式里的肉块，外酥里嫩，鲜甜溜滑，乍一入口，未及咀嚼，便已咕噜一声穿喉入腹，唯唇齿留香，令人惊叹不已；
说法三，因此菜历史悠久，故称为古老肉，后转化成咕咾肉、咕噜肉。

 

from

https://baike.baidu.com/item/咕老肉

 

If you use small pieces of spare rib instead of meat, then it's called 生炒排骨.

 

According to my wife, the secret to 咕噜肉 is to deep fry the meat twice.

[abcdefg]

1 hour ago, lips said:

According to my wife, the secret to 咕噜肉 is to deep fried the meat twice.

 

Sounds like a dish to be on my "eat out instead of making at home" list. 

[Christa]

2 hours ago, abcdefg said:

Sounds like a dish to be on my "eat out instead of making at home" list. 

 

Yeah, I think so. It should go in that group. Whenever I've made sweet and sour, it has never been truly excellent.

[somethingfunny]

I think a lot of these recipes, if done properly, will call for deep frying the meat twice.  As I mentioned earlier, once to cook the meat and again to get the right colour.  The added benefit will be that the meat part (pretty much the main part of the meal) will likely have cooled while making the sauce, and so the second fry will mean it's fresh out of the pan before being served.  I wouldn't be surprised if restaurants pre-fry a load of meat and then just give it the second fry whenever it is ordered.

 

I told myself I wouldn't come back to this thread.  It just makes me hungry.  And the staff canteen where I work doesn't have 锅包肉.  I worked at a place in China where it did, and it was half decent too.