I usually deep fry my veggies for this dish because it seems so traditional—by that I mean it echoes every sweet and sour on the menus’ of local South-African-Chinese restaurants. However, I read in the New York Times that the veggies could be crisped effectively, without all the batter and oil, in an air fryer. Since I got a shiny new-air fryer-toy for Christmas I thought I’d add the method to the recipe as an alternative.
Air Fryer Method
For ultra crispy veggies in the air fryer use a combination of veggie oil and cornflour. I used 6 tablespoons of Maizena with 5 tablespoons of sunflower oil and 1 tablespoon of sesame oil (for flavour). Simply sprinkle clean, dry florets of cauliflower, stalks of mushrooms, cubes of pineapple or any other suitable veggie with 3 tablespoons of cornflour. Mix the veggies up so that they’re fully coated. Then, spoon on the oil combo and mix again. Repeat the process making sure that there are no dry spots on the veggies and pop into the air fryer in a single layer at 200 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Shake halfway through the process and voila, gorgeous crispy veggies. (See video below)
Traditional method
Now for the traditional deep fried method :-
The secret to getting a really crispy coating on the veggies is sparkling water. Once you’ve made your batter using sparkling water you’ll never, ever make it any other way.
Ingredients
veggies
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup of chilled sparkling water
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon white vinegar
Sauce
½ cup of sugar
1 cup of sparkling water
¼ cup tomato sauce (ketchup)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ cup vinegar
1 ½ tablespoons cornflour
Few pieces of chopped fresh pineapple (optional)
Oil for frying
Steamed rice to serve
Method
Sift the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.
Mix the vinegar into the sparkling water. Slowly add the sparkling water to the flour mixing, well.
If the batter is too thick, mix in more sparkling water. The batter should coat the pieces of vegetables evenly and thoroughly.
Coat the vegetables by mixing into the batter.
Heat the oil (sunflower oil) to 270 degrees Celsius. Deep fry the vegetables in batches until golden brown (5-8 minutes)
Sauce
Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until the sugar melts. Make a slurry using cornflour and water. Raise the heat and vigorously stir in the slurry, stirring all the while until the sauce thickens.
Serve over steamed or fried rice with the sauce separately.
All photos and videos are mine. Images shot using my iPad and manipulated using ArtStudio and VideoCraft
Text to speech (hehee! The first voice is a voiceover from elevenlabs.com)
Music is AI generated on SoundFusion.ai