Koe Loe Yuk (Sweet-Sour Battered Pork)
Koe loe yuk
Cubes of pork in a crisp batter, fried twice and served with a bright sweet and sour sauce of pineapple and peppers: the Cantonese classic of Dutch takeaway.
IIIStews & Braises- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Intermediate
The takeaway menu lists it under pork, usually a few lines away from babi pangang, and from the names alone the two are easy to confuse. Koe loe yuk is the one in batter: cubes of pork fried until they crackle, served with a bright sweet and sour sauce full of pineapple, peppers and onion. Where babi pangang is roast pork, koe loe yuk is Cantonese sweet and sour pork, and it reached the Netherlands with its Cantonese name almost intact.
From Guangdong to the Dutch takeaway
Gu lou yuk, written koe loe yuk in Dutch, is one of the best known dishes of Cantonese cooking, the sweet and sour pork of Guangdong and Hong Kong. It travelled wherever Cantonese cooks went, Indonesia included, and it came onto the menus of the Chinees-Indisch restaurants that spread through the Netherlands from the 1960s. The Dutch version tends toward a thicker batter and a sweeter sauce than you would meet in Guangzhou, and some takeaways push the colour toward a frank, cheerful red. It is a Cantonese classic cooked for a Dutch appetite, and there is no shame in either half.
Fried twice, sauced late
The whole dish depends on the batter staying crisp, and two habits make that happen. First, fry twice. The first round, at a moderate heat, cooks the pork through. The second, hotter and brief, drives the last moisture out of the crust and turns a soft coat into one that crackles. Second, keep the pork and the sauce apart until the last moment. Plenty of takeaways pack the sauce in its own tub for exactly this reason, and at home you can pour it at the table.
Koe loe yuk is fried food with a deadline: eat it while the batter still crackles.
The sauce itself should be glossy and translucent, sweet enough to please a child and sour enough to cut through the fat. Cook the peppers and onion only briefly, so they stay crisp, and let the pineapple warm through rather than stew. With a bowl of white rice it is a complete meal, and a loud one.
“Keep the pork and sauce apart until the last second. Koe loe yuk is at its best in the first five minutes, while the batter still crackles.”
Ingredients
Serves 4
The pork
- 600 gpork shoulder or pork fillet, in 2–3 cm cubes
- 1 tbsplight soy sauce
- 1 tbspShaoxing rice wine, or dry sherry
- 0.5 tspsalt
- 0.25 tspwhite pepper
The batter
- 1egg
- 60 gcornflour
- 60 gplain flour
- 0.5 tspbaking powder
- about 100 mlice-cold water
- 1 litreneutral oil, for deep frying
The sweet and sour sauce
- 1 tbspneutral oil
- 1onion, in wedges
- 1red pepper, in 2 cm squares
- 1green pepper, in 2 cm squares
- 200 gpineapple chunks, tinned, plus 100 ml of the juice
- 4 tbsptomato ketchup
- 3 tbspsugar
- 3 tbsprice vinegar or white vinegar
- 1 tbsplight soy sauce
- 150 mlwater
- 1 tbspcornflour, slaked in 2 tbsp water
Method
- 1
Marinate the pork
Toss the pork cubes with the soy, rice wine, salt and pepper and leave for 30 minutes. Keep the cubes small and even, so they cook through in the time it takes the batter to crisp.
- 2
Mix the batter
Whisk the egg with both flours and the baking powder, then add the cold water a little at a time until the batter is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, like thick yoghurt. Stop mixing once it is smooth. Cold water and a light hand keep the crust crisp rather than bready.
- 3
Fry twice
Heat the oil in a wok or deep pan to 170°C. Coat the pork in batter and fry in batches for about 4 minutes, until pale gold and cooked through, then drain. Raise the oil to 190°C and fry again for one to two minutes until deep golden and crackling. The second frying drives the last moisture out of the crust, which is what keeps it crisp under the sauce.
- 4
Make the sauce
In a clean wok, fry the onion and peppers in the oil for two minutes so they soften but keep their bite. Add the pineapple and its juice with the ketchup, sugar, vinegar, soy and water and bring to a simmer. Whisk in the slaked cornflour and cook until the sauce turns glossy and translucent.
- 5
Serve at once
Either toss the pork through the sauce at the very last moment, or do as many takeaways do and serve the sauce separately, so the batter stays crisp until the fork reaches it. Serve with plain white rice.
Alongside the braise
Slow pots want something to catch the sauce and something sweet against it.
- Boiled potatoes, or a mound of plain rice for zuurvlees
- Rode kool met appel, red cabbage stewed with apple
- Appelmoes, apple sauce, the eternal Dutch side
- Zoervleisj on fries, Limburg-style, over frites
Questions from the kitchen
What does koe loe yuk mean?+
It is the Dutch spelling of the Cantonese gu lou yuk, the name for sweet and sour pork in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Yuk means meat, here pork.
What is the difference between koe loe yuk and babi pangang?+
Babi pangang is roast pork belly, sliced and served under a red sweet and sour sauce. Koe loe yuk is cubed pork in batter, deep fried and served with a sauce full of pineapple and peppers. The sauces are cousins. The pork is cooked in a completely different way.
Can I make it in an air fryer?+
A wet batter needs hot oil. For an air fryer, dip the marinated pork in beaten egg and then in dry cornflour, spray with oil and cook at 200°C for about 12 minutes, shaking halfway. The crust is crisp, if thinner.
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