Meat & BBQ
Tangsuyuk (Sweet and Sour Pork)
Prep
30 min
Cook
25 min
Servings
3
Photo: Lifetime Travelmates · CC BY-SA 2.0
Steps
- 1
Mix potato starch with cold water and let it stand 30 minutes until the starch settles and the water can be poured off the top.
- 2
Combine the settled starch paste with egg white and salt, then coat the pork strips.
- 3
Heat oil to around 320F and fry the pork in batches 4-5 minutes until pale and cooked through. Drain.
- 4
Raise the oil to 375F and fry again, 1-2 minutes, until deep golden and hard-crisp. Drain well.
- 5
For the sauce, bring water, sugar, vinegar and soy sauce to a boil.
- 6
Add the vegetables and cook 1 minute - they should stay crunchy.
- 7
Stir in the starch slurry and cook just until the sauce turns clear and glossy.
- 8
Serve the sauce alongside the pork, or pour it over at the table.
Did you know — Korean culture
Tangsuyuk comes with Korea's most enduring food argument, and it has a name. Bu-meok means pouring the sauce over the pork; jjik-meok means keeping it on the side and dipping. People hold genuinely firm positions, restaurants ask which you want, and the debate resurfaces online with the regularity of a public holiday. Dipping keeps the crust crisp; pouring gets sauce into every piece.
Potato starch, not flour, is what makes this dish. It fries into a thin glassy shell that shatters, rather than the soft golden crust wheat flour gives you. The settling step is worth the half hour: pouring off the water leaves a dense starch paste that clings to the pork instead of sliding off in the oil.
The double fry follows the same logic as Korean fried chicken. The first low-temperature pass cooks the pork through; the second, much hotter pass drives out surface moisture and hardens the coating. Skip the second fry and the crust softens within a minute of meeting the sauce.
The sauce should stay clear and sharp. Vegetables go in for a minute at most - they are there for crunch and colour, not to be cooked down - and the starch slurry goes in last, until the sauce turns from cloudy to glossy. Overcook it and you get a gluey syrup instead of a bright one.
Troubleshooting
Coating sliding off in the oil? Your starch paste was too wet. Let the starch settle properly and pour off the excess water before coating.
Crust going soft immediately? Either the second fry was skipped or the oil was not hot enough. It needs a genuine 375F pass.
Sauce cloudy and thick? Overcooked slurry. Add it at the very end and stop as soon as it clears.