This is for all really Sichuan Food Lover, the best Yu Xiang dishes.

Even Sichuan food is well known for the famous hot pot, even tea smoked duck, blanched cabbage etc, but I still insist that the best part of this cuisine also lay in home style dishes like Yu Xiang dishes (Yu Xiang Eggplants) and Mapo dishes (mapo tofu). With very humble ingredients, we can still presents wonderful flavors with different combinations and ratios.

Yu Xiang sauce is great for lots of ingredients but the most popular match is eggplants and shredded pork. It is quite interesting that Yu Xiang dish is quite different even in Sichuan area. The upper river area including Chengdu love to add shredded lettuce stem, wood ear mushrooms and carrot. But the lower river area including Chongqing love to use only scallion or yellow scallion and skip all the other side ingredients. I introduce my hometown style and use only scallions this time with a friendly to beginner method.

ABC about Yu Xiang Sauce

Yu Xiang sauce “鱼香” actually means Fish-Fragrant, is a kind of flavor which is quite famous in Sichuan dishes. It has a lovely hot and sour yet sweet flavor. Pickled chili pepper (泡椒) is the most important ingredient for this dish. I believe pickled pepper is also the reason of nameless outside China. Because pickled pepper is hard to find. You can buy pickled peppers in Asian stores, or make it at home using large jars or glass bottles. The fish is actually in the pickling jar of pickled peppers in one of the traditional Sichuan pickling.

Some of the traditional cook use only pickled peppers in Yu Xiang sauce. But I find adding some doubanjiang can improve the color of the dish to the next level.

How to prepare the pork

In order to make soft and tender pork shreds, marinating the pork with the following steps.

1. add light soy sauce, salt, sugar and white pepper. Mix well and set aside for 15 minutes. With this process, the pork shreds can obtain a basic flavor. At the same time, soak slices of ginger and scallion in a bowl with 2-3 tablespoons of warm water. Then pour around 2 tablespoons of ginger and scallion water to the pork shreds. Continue mixing and then you will find the water is absorbed.
2. Mix 1 tablespoon of starch with 1 tablespoon of water. Add to the pork shreds.

Before stir frying, mix around 3 tablespoons of oil with the shreds to avoid them sticky together with the help of starch. Meanwhile this step make sure the pork shreds are fried with cold oil in hot wok (热锅冷油)

Cook's Note

1.I modified the steps so it can be workable in our own kitchen where the fire is not strong enough. The key step is to transfer the pork shreds out as long as it turns color in the first frying. The shreds might not be well cooked but it is ok because we will continue to heat it with the sauces.

2. Following the steps to prepare the pork shreds contribute a lot to tender pork shreds.

3. The sauce needs a large amount of aromatics including garlic, ginger and scallion. So don't reduce the amount listed in the ingredient list.

Steps

Heat the wok firstly and then pour a small amount of oil to coat the wok. Place pork shreds in. Let it stay for 2-3 seconds and then mix from time to time. Once the pork shreds changes color. Transfer out. You may find this step is unnecessary for restaurants because they get super high fire and the dish can be finished within seconds. I recommend this step for home cooking with smaller fire. But we can get very close result.

Leave the oil in and then place doubanjiang and pickled peppers in. Fry over small fire for 10 seconds until the oil turns red completely. Add garlic and ginger. Fry until aromatic.

Return pork shreds and re-stir the Yu Xiang Sauce. Pour the sauce to the wok and heat for a while until the content boils. Then place the scallions in. Mix well.

Here is our super good looking, tender and great in flavor Yu Xiang Pork shreds.