Northern Chinese · Main
Guo Bao Rou
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, acid holding everything up to the light, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 400 g pork loin, sliced 4 mm thick across the grain
- 5 g salt
- 10 g Shaoxing wine
- 150 g potato starch
- 150 g cold water
- 20 g neutral oil, to loosen the batter
- 1.2 L neutral oil, for frying
- 80 g caster sugar
- 80 g clear rice vinegar
- 15 g light soy sauce
- 30 g water, for the sauce
- 30 g ginger, in fine julienne
- 4 garlic cloves, sliced
- 3 spring onions, in fine julienne
- 1 small carrot, in fine julienne
- a few coriander stems, cut in lengths
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Stir the potato starch into the cold water and leave it 30 minutes, until it settles into a hard white cake under clear water. Pour the water off and work the cake with the 20 g of oil into a batter the texture of thick cream. 30 min
- Season the pork with salt and wine, then fold it through the batter until every slice hangs heavy and fully cloaked.
- Fry at 150C (300F), sliding the slices in one at a time so they cannot weld together, for about 2 minutes, until set and pale with no colour at all. Lift out and rest 3 minutes. 2 min
- Fry again at 200C (390F) for 40 seconds, until the crust blisters, goes glassy and rattles against the spider. Drain.
- Boil sugar, vinegar, soy and water in a clean wok until it just turns syrupy and coats the back of a spoon, then kill the heat and throw in the ginger, garlic, spring onion, carrot and coriander stems.
- Return the pork and toss for no more than ten seconds, until every piece is lacquered and still audibly crackling, then plate at once.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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