Stir fried pork tenderloin in dark sauce and onions

Tags

Chinese, healthy, Home Cooking, mains, onions, pork, tenderloin

 

This is one of my brother’s favourite foods. As he’s a picky eater, I thought I’d make this for dinner. Made this in Whistler, Canada during the christmas holidays. We go almost every year and there’s always a kitchen in the winter lodging where we can cook our meals. Of course, the kitchen was probably not made for serious cooking… probably meant for stuff like heating up soups, making instant noodles and the such but not that we cared 😉 We’re Asians! We like our stir fry and rice! This year I even brought my own condiments and essential ingredients like soy sauce, dark sauce, ABC sauce, corn flour, sesame oil etc. I was almost asleep on my feet, cooking in the kitchen after putting in a long day of snowboarding in the powder, but I enjoyed myself 🙂

Ingredients (Serves 6-8)

1) 500g pork tenderloin at room temperature

2) 1 tbsp ABC sauce (kicap manis)

3) 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

4) 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

5) 2 tbsp sugar

6) 2 tsp cornflour

7) 1/2 tsp sesame oil (optional)

8) 1 large green onion, sliced

9) 5-6 tbsp Chicken stock

Cooking method

1) Prepare the pork by cutting it into slices. The way you cut it is important to retain the succulence and tenderness of the pork. As you can see from the photo below, I’m cutting it lengthwise, or “along the grain“. To do this, I cut up the tenderloin into four separate pieces so I can cut along the grain for each of the hunks of meat to result in bite sized slices (see pictures below). I find that if you cut horizontally, the meat tends to dry up quickly and would become rubbery and harder in texture. If you follow this method there is absolutely no need to use a meat tenderizer and the meat stays tender even after a night in the fridge and a reheat! The other important bit is that the pork has to be at room temperature when you cook it.

2) Marinade the meat with soy sauce, dark sauce, ABC sauce, sesame oil, sugar and flour. Leave for about half an hour at room temperature.

3) Fry the onions first until translucent and gold around the edges (they turned out kinda white in the photos but it’s supposed to be a little golden!) and set aside in the serving plate.

4) Station your chicken stock next to the frying pan (I used half of the chicken stock in the bowl below)

4) Heat up your pan to medium-high heat and add some oil to cover the surface of the pan.

5) Once your pan is hot (doesn’t need to be smoking hot as it tends to burn fast), place your pork in the pan (yes I’ve overcrowded it but it still came out awesome ;p) and brown both sides. The pork should not be sticking to the pan.

6) Add the stock to the pan and cover for 30 seconds.

7) Remove cover, stir through, cover again and lower the heat to medium.

8) Stir every 30 seconds for another minute or two until the gravy thickens and pork is cooked through.

9) Ladle the pork onto the serving plate atop the onions and spoon the sauce all over the pork and onions

The result is really juicy pork in sweet dark sauce, the perfect accompaniment for fluffy white rice.

 

The rest of the dinner I made that day: