Pictorial: Pork Chops, Honey Garlic Sauce

[hzrt8w]

Pork Chops with Honey Garlic Sauce (蜜汁蒜子骨)

This dish, Pork Chops (or Pork Ribs) with Honey Garlic Sauce, can be found in many Cantonese restaurants. We really like the taste of sweet honey with garlic. The cooks in restaurants usually deep-fry the pork chops. It is inconvenient to set up for deep-frying at home. I just fried the pork chops in shallow oil under high heat instead. The result is roughly the same.

I used pork loin for this dish because my wife does not like any pork fat and doesn't care for the bones either. You may use other cuts that you like. For this dish I really like to use malt sugar because of its characteristic sweetness and stickiness. It is a bit harder to work with because malt sugar is so hard in room temperature and it sticks on everything. It is easier to work with powdered white or brown sugar if you like.

Cut the pork loin into slices, about 1/4 inch thick. Season it by sprinkling some salt and black (or white) ground pepper on top.

Scoop a generous spoonful (or a couple of spoonful) of malt sugar into a bowl. Add some water. Heat up the mixture in a microwave. Malt sugar dissolves much easier in boiling hot water.

Add some honey into this mixture. Also minced a few cloves of garlic.

Pour some flour onto a bowl. (Or you may use corn starch, or the "frying powder" if you like.) Heat a shallow pan of cooking oil utnil temperature reaches high. Coat the pork loin slices on both sides. Place on the pan to sear until they turn golden brown on both sides.

You may sear up to 10 slices in each batch.

Remove the pork loin slices once both sides have turned golden brown. Drain excess frying oil. Clean the pan - because the residue from the flour would have already turned into charcoal.

Start with a clean pan. Heat to high temperature. Add a bit of cooking oil. Add minced garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir for a few seconds. Add a dash of white vinegar.

Add the malt-sugar/honey/water mixture. Stir well and bring to a boil. Thicken the sauce with some corn starch slurry. Keep stirring and check for the right consistency. It should not be too watery, and yet not too thick that it would stick on the spatula.

Re-add the pork loin onto the pan. Stir and flip the pork loin to make sure each slice is evenly coated with the honey garlic sauce.

The finished dish. Add some cilantro as a garnish.

[Tepee]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Another great dish....for dinner next week.

I've been see-sawing between liking loin or ribs forever, currently favoring ribs. There must be only one producer of maltose...because I have that same jar in my kitchen.

[petite tête de chou]

Such a lovely and simple meal. Personally, I prefer fewer ingredients in nearly all of my meals but it's quite a trick to get my husbands taste-buds to agree. Thank you so much !

[hzrt8w]

There must be only one producer of maltose...because I have that same jar in my kitchen.

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Maybe only this one passed the scrutiny of the exporters. This is the one and only brand I have seen in the USA too.

[torakris]

I need to go pick up some pork!!

That really looks incredible, I know my family will love this.

That malt sugar seems to be quite popular at least in Eastern Asia, I know the Koreans have a similar product (forget its name...) and the Japanese have one two. The Japanese product, mizuame ("water candy" ), is now just like a thick clear syrup, the true malt version are quite hard to find.

Time to get myself down to the Chinatown here in Yokohama, I need to restock my kitchen!

[Dejah]

hzrt! Does your wife realize how lucky she is! And, does she realize how you are flirting with our taste buds?

You are doing a great job. keep it up

I always fried our pork chops on the grill. Used sliced pork butt for the mix of fat and lean. After frying, we'd make the sauce with water, lots of local honey (bought the stuff in large pails), chopped garlic AND garlic powder. This was made in a large 24" wok...served for the buffet only.

We made honey garlic spareribs per order. These were first boiled in the honey garlic water mix...drained and cooled, egg washed, breaded individually in cracker meal, then deep fried. These were prep. every couple of days and refridgerated. When we need the order, we'd quickly heat them up in the deep fryer, make up the sauce and toss them in for a quick coating. Sesame seeds were sprinkled on as a final touch.

The honey garlic flavour is right through to the bone!

[hzrt8w]

Thank you Kris, Dejah and Suzie for your words of encouragement.

My wife grew up eating her mom's home cooking with menu repeated about once a week. She is very easy going when it comes to food and can tolerate just about anything. She is delighted to try different dishes, except that she would only eat white meat and leave me with any dark meat, bones, skins and shells to chew on.

I have been so busy with work/study in the past year that I hardly had time to cook. Now during my break, I can take a little time to make many different dishes, some of which I had not cooked for a long time.

Dejah: are you teaching me all the techniques in bulk production so I can work in some of the family restaurants here?

Edited September 25, 2005 by hzrt8w (log)

[Dejah]

Dejah:  are you teaching me all the techniques in bulk production so I can work in some of the family restaurants here?   

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Hey! With your love of food, knowledge, and skills, anything is possible!

Let's see what we can do here:

Wesza can bankroll and advise, as he is a food and restaurant consultant...

You can cook and boss the kitchen, and I, well, I would love to work the front of the house 'cos I've had my run in the kitchen...

Tepee can be our master baker: mooncakes for Moon festival, bday cakes, all things sweet...

torakris can be our Japanese "fuser"...

Pan our flutist...

Suzi? Are ya in?

Gastro?

Ben Sook will want to be the food taster...

Who else want to be in this venture? Virtual Chinese restaurant?

[jo-mel]

Dejah:  are you teaching me all the techniques in bulk production so I can work in some of the family restaurants here?    

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Hey! With your love of food, knowledge, and skills, anything is possible!

Let's see what we can do here:

Wesza can bankroll and advise, as he is a food and restaurant consultant...

You can cook and boss the kitchen, and I, well, I would love to work the front of the house 'cos I've had my run in the kitchen...

Tepee can be our master baker: mooncakes for Moon festival, bday cakes, all things sweet...

torakris can be our Japanese "fuser"...

Pan our flutist...

Suzi? Are ya in?

Gastro?

Ben Sook will want to be the food taster...

Who else want to be in this venture? Virtual Chinese restaurant?

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I'll be a server or clean up----- if I can be a taster, too!

[Dejah]

Forget clean-up jo-mel. With your extensive knowledge of Chinese food, and teaching Chinese cooking classes, I think we'd need you on the menu planning team.

Perhaps we should start a new thread....plan the restaurant from base up...then menus...daily specials, pictorials to go with that... and even recipes...

With what hzrt's been showing us, there seems to be real interest in home style cooking rather than banquet fare. What cha think? Guys and Dolls? Would be fun!

[Tepee]

Let's!! Over to you, Sue-On...we have a restaurant to open!

Edited September 26, 2005 by Tepee (log)

[hzrt8w]

Perhaps we should start a new thread....plan the restaurant from base up...then menus...daily specials, pictorials to go with that... and even recipes...

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Very interesting. How would this work? Planning a "virtual" restaurant?

Gotta get Tepee to do the decoration. She's the artist.

[Ben Hong]

there seems to be real interest in home style cooking rather than banquet fare.

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I believe that people are a) wanting to reconnect with their "roots" again and b)that more and more people are finding restaurant or banquet style foods are really not as healthy as a traditional home cooked meal.

BTW, "Official Food Taster" in this fine restaurant restaurant that you guys are starting up would suit me fine.

[Gastro888]

Dejah:  are you teaching me all the techniques in bulk production so I can work in some of the family restaurants here?    

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Gastro?

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<bows and kotows>

<bows and kotows>

<bows and kotows>

Apologies to all! I'm here, I'm here! Still alive! How are you all?

Just have been busy with dragon boating, work and personal life.

I'm going to Philly this weekend to participate in the Philly Dragon Boat festival. Whee hee! Much to prepare for. Must find out where the best dim sum place is for my teammates.

Miss talking to you all!

[Ben Hong]

Apologies to all! I'm here, I'm here!  Still alive!  How are you all? 

Just have been busy with dragon boating, work and personal life. 

Miss talking to you all!

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Gastro Gurl, great to see you still around, we missed you. I noticed that you visited Montreal last month, good experience? Did you get to Toronto for their HUGE Dragon Boat Regatta?

[Gastro888]

Uncle Ben, I'll PM you and update you on what's going on. =)

As for this dish, is this Cantonese or Toisanese? Just wondering. I've never actually HAD this before.

So shameful, I know...

[torakris]

taadaa!

I made it tonight as part of the tag team foodblog (snowangel and myself)

This was soooo good!

My whole family loved it and it was really easy, I didn't have malt syrup (not even the Japanese kind) so I just added sugar. Next time I will use a little it more garlic, I don't know what I was so scared of...

Thank for the recipe, I will be making it quite a bit.

I served the pork over shredded cabbage and the combination of the cabbage and sauce was sort of a sweet and sour coleslaw, I am going to try a coleslaw with a simialr sauce, the kids devoured it.

[hzrt8w]

That looks great, Kris! I am so happy that you like this dish.

[little ms foodie]

This looks awesome, can I ask what you served with it, maybe just some nice rice?

Is this in the recipe gullet? I'm going to make this!

[hzrt8w]

This looks awesome, can I ask what you served with it, maybe just some nice rice?

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In the Chinese restaurants, this dish is served with steamed rice.

[laurenkusa]

This looks awesome, can I ask what you served with it, maybe just some nice rice?

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In the Chinese restaurants, this dish is served with steamed rice.

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Couldn't you also serve it with noodles? It looks yummy and the sauce looks like a good match for either starch. It also looked good on the cabbage.

Go garlic!

[hzrt8w]

I think I am going to run a small catering business for carnivals and farmers markets and offer some of my recipes. This dish seems to be a kicker.

Do you think honey garlic sauce would go well with grilled chicken too?

[Marlene]

It would be great if you would put this in recipegullet. I've been eying this recipe for a week now wanting to try it. Of course, I can't find malt sugar anywhere.

[hzrt8w]

..... I can't find malt sugar anywhere.

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Don't worry about malt sugar. Using any brown sugar would do.

[BettyK]

I made these pork chops but somehow the sauce didn't get brown. Wonder what I did wrong. I had to add some dark soy sauce for colour. It was still very good. Next time I will cut the pork chops in smaller pieces so they don't curl up.

Next time I will use honey only or honey and brown sugar. That malt syrup is not easy to work with...it is sooo sticky. Felt like I was pulling sugar. Marlene, you really don't need malt syrup. But if you really want some I can mail you my jar and you can have some fun in the kitchen.

I'm trying the chicken next. Hz, thanks for these great pictorials. Keep them coming.