MUZIChinese Matrix
Cantonese Cuisine · FFET10306
A Cantonese dish of fried pork pieces tossed with pineapple, onion and peppers in a sweet and sour sauce.
A round white porcelain plate holds egg-battered pork loin, yellow pineapple, onion, red and green peppers in glossy red ketchup sauce with garlic, minced ginger and scallion, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
The regional cooking of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, prized for live, fresh ingredients and light flavours.
Gu lao rou is a Cantonese dish of battered or starch-coated pork fried and tossed in a sweet and sour sauce of vinegar, sugar and tomato, with pineapple, onion and peppers. Its name is usually written as gu lu rou in Hong Kong and Guangdong and gu lao rou elsewhere; an older name, gu lu rou (old braised meat), is tied to reused braising liquid. A 2019 Singapore article presents one account of its origins involving foreign merchants in Guangzhou’s Xiguan area in the late Qing, without a specific year or primary record. The 2 recipes show different methods: one coats pork shoulder in potato starch and fries it 2 times; the other coats pork loin in egg and cornstarch and fries it 1 time.
Gu lao rou is a Cantonese dish: pork pieces are coated in flour or starch, fried and tossed in a sweet and sour sauce, with pineapple, onion and peppers. Ingredients also include pork shoulder, tomato, hawthorn, sugar, lemon and tamarind.1,3,4
The exact date and inventor are unknown, and a late-Qing account in a 2019 Singapore article gives no specific year or primary text. According to this account, foreign merchants in the Xiguan area of Guangzhou favored boneless fried sweet and sour pork in the late Qing.1,2
This Cantonese dish is usually written as gu lu rou in Hong Kong and Guangdong and gu lao rou elsewhere; Japan’s suton is made differently. One account holds that it began as a summer dish in Guangdong and was later carried by Cantonese emigrants to San Francisco’s Chinatown.1,2
The 2 recipes differ: one cuts pork shoulder into pieces about 2.5 cm across, marinates them for 1 hour, coats them in potato starch and fries them in batches 2 times. Its sauce uses tomato paste fried in oil, vinegar, sugar, water and soy sauce, thickened and tossed with pineapple, bell pepper and onion. The other cuts pork loin into strips, marinates them with wine, salt and white pepper, coats them with egg and cornstarch and fries them 1 time. Its sauce uses ketchup, wine, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, cooked with onion, red and green bell pepper and pineapple.3,4
One account holds that foreign merchants disliked bone-in meat, so Cantonese cooks made boneless fried sweet and sour pork for them.2
Cantonese emigrants carried gu lao rou to San Francisco’s Chinatown, and similar dishes exist in Japan, Korea and the Caribbean.2
There are several tales of the name: one says it echoes the gulp of mouths watering, and another says it is how diners from abroad pronounced gu lao rou, “old meat.” The article verifies none of them.
Told in: Cantonese food lore, told in the same 2019 Michelin Guide Singapore article, which lists several tales and marks all of them as unverified.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is my home version of Cantonese sweet and sour pork, with the amounts and the frying temperature and time following one signed recipe: pork loin cut into strips, marinated briefly with wine, salt and white pepper, mixed with egg and cornstarch, and fried once, with a sauce of ketchup, wine, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. A second signed recipe uses pork shoulder and potato starch, fries twice and makes its sauce from tomato paste fried in oil; I did not follow it and mention it just in the tips. The conversions of tablespoons and cups to milliliters are my estimates. The pork must be fried all the way through, and I cut one strip open to check that no pink is left.
Allergens: egg, soy, wheat, fish
