Leftover Roast Pork with Sweet and Sour Sauce is a fantastic way to use up leftover meat. It’s tasty, packed with veg and perfect if your pork is a little dry.
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Sweet and Sour is such a classic. The mix of flavours should probably be a bit crazy, but it just works.
We all love sweet and sour, whether it’s made from scratch, using leftover roast pork like this, from the Chinese or even out of a jar.
In fact, throwing a jar of sweet and sour sauce over your leftover roast pork is totally fantastic if you don’t want to make your own sauce.
I do recommend making your own if you can though.
It’s quick and easy, you’ll have most of the ingredients already, and making sweet and sour sauce from scratch means that you can adjust the recipe to suit your tastes.
Making it either sweeter, sourer, or just a bit less tart for your family dinner.
How to Make Leftover Roast Pork with Sweet and Sour Sauce
Making Sweet and Sour with Leftover Roast Pork couldn’t be easier.
Because the pork is already cooked, there’s no batter or deep frying. You just have to dice your cooked pork for a Sweet and Sour Pork without Batter.
Making Sweet and Sour Pork without Deep Frying also means that it’s healthier, as well as faster and who doesn’t want a Healthy Sweet and Sour Pork?
I basically chop my veg and pork, whisk the sauce and fry it all together. Easy!
How to Make Sweet and Sour Sauce from Scratch
This is a very Easy Sweet and Sour Sauce.
The base is the juice from the tinned pineapple.
A lot of people make it with 1/3 ketchup, 1/3 sugar and 1/3 vinegar. But I always prefer the flavour with the pineapple juice.
My Quick Sweet and Sour Sauce Ingredients are:
- Juice from the tinned pineapple (tends to be about 150-200 ml)
- 1 tablespoon Soy Sauce
- 2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
- 2 tablespoons Soft Light Brown Sugar
- 3 tablespoons Tomato Ketchup
- 1 tablespoon Cornflour
I mix the cornflour with a little splash of the pineapple juice before adding the rest of the ingredients and the rest of the juice and whisking it all together.
If you haven’t got apple cider vinegar you can substitute it for white wine vinegar, or just malt vinegar at a push.
Then, I taste it.
I think this Sweet and Sour Sauce Recipe is fairly balanced, but you can add more sugar if you like it sweeter, more vinegar if you prefer a sour taste and some water if you just want to tone the flavour down a little bit.
Using Up Dry Leftover Roast Pork
Leftover Pork Sweet and Sour is perfect if your pork is a little dry. Reheating it in a sticky sauce like this is a great way to give it new life.
What Vegetables Should You Have in a Sweet and Sour?
I like to add pineapple, carrots, peppers and red onion to my sweet and sour.
However, you can make changes. You could add courgette, different peppers, chilli, and pretty much anything else.
You can even make Sweet and Sour Sauce without Pineapple, you’ll then just need to increase the sugar, ketchup and vinegar in your sauce to compensate for the lack of pineapple juice.
What to Serve with Leftover Roast Pork with Sweet and Sour Sauce
We typically serve our sweet and sour with leftover pork with either rice or straight to wok noodles and beansprouts.
You could also serve with chips, or couscous if you prefer.
Other Ways to Use Up Leftover Roast Pork
If you like this recipe, you might also want to try some other Leftover Roast Pork Recipes. My favourites include:
- Pork Stew
- Leftover Pork Pasta
- Leftover Roast Pork Fried Rice
- Pulled Pork Flatbreads
- Pork Stroganoff
- Leftover Roast Pork Pasta Bake
- Pork Curry
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Leftover Roast Pork with Sweet and Sour Sauce
Equipment
Ingredients
For the Sauce:
- 150 ml of Pineapple Juice (approx – use the juice from the tinned pineapples)
- 1 tablespoon Soy Sauce
- 2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
- 2 tablespoons Soft Light Brown Sugar
- 3 tablespoons Tomato Ketchup
- 1 tablespoon Cornflour
For the Sweet and Sour Pork
- Cooking Spray or 1tbsp oil
- 1 Red Onion – Finely Diced
- 1 Clove Garlic – Crushed
- 350 g Cooked Roast Pork (Chopped – or whatever you’ve got left)
- 1 tsp Ginger Puree (or Lazy Ginger, or 1tsp fresh ginger grated finely)
- 425 g Tinned Pineapple (Drained – with the juice used in the sauce – and chopped into small chunks
- 2 Peppers (Deseeded and chopped into small chunks – any colour is fine)
- 2 Medium Carrots (Peeled and sliced)
Instructions
- To make the sauce first mix together the cornflour with a small splash of the pineapple juice in a small jug until smooth.
- Then add the rest of the juice and other ingredients and whisk together well.
- Set to one side.
- Now, heat the oil or spray in a large frying pan.
- Add the onions and garlic and fry for 5 minutes until soft.
- Add the chopped pork and the ginger and stir, fry for 2 minutes.
- Tip in the peppers and carrots and mix, fry for a further 2 minutes.
- Pour in the sauce and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring often.
- Add the pineapple chunks and stir until evenly distributed.
- Simmer for a further 5 minutes.
- Serve straight from the pan with rice or noodles.
Notes
- Don’t worry if you’ve got less pork, there’s plenty of veg to bulk it out.
- Adjust the sweet and sour sauce recipe to suit your taste, adding more vinegar or sugar, you can also add some water if it starts to dry out, or if you prefer a milder flavour.
- Nutritional information doesn’t include rice, or other sides.
- The links in this post are affiliate links.
Nutrition
Any nutritional information is given as a general guide only and may not be accurate. The information is provided using an online calculator and is specific to my ingredients. Please make your own calculations if you want precise information.
Thank you for your recipe. I’m going to attempt it tonight, sounds great!
Thank you. I hope you like it!
Was nice but I would double the amount of sauce next timeas there wasn’t much left after simmering. Thanks for sharing this recipe!
I made this tonight and used long thin strips of peppers and carrots which looked very attractive in the finished dish. I thought there was enough sauce, but added soy sauce at the end.
I will make it again.
loved it thanks ! used the recipe for the sauce and also the pork. Great idea to use leftover roast pork ! I roasted mine especially for the dish. no doubt way healthier than deep frying it and certainly much easier. the sauce was lovely – a bit hit ! Served mine with sweetcorn, pineapple and carrots mixed in with the pork and basmati rice and grilled broccoli with sesame oil ! :)
Sounds lovely Claire, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Dear Lady, Thank you so much. I was shocked when my pork loin roast was so dry/hard. I tried to wrap my head around what to do. I fried some mushrooms and garlic and added it to an alfredo sauce and that took care of “some” of it. BUT OMGoodness!!! your sauce is the ultimate. Thank you and thank you to ALL you Beautiful! Devas! who share with the rest of us. Life has it’s many challenges and it’s so Gratifying to find YOU’ALL!!
Thanks Lynn, so glad you liked it!
Turned out nice. Had to turn the heat down on the onions and garlic to medium low. Total time to cook in instructions appears to be more than the 20 minutes stated. I put mushrooms in with the onions and garlic and that worked out well. I used sweet and sour sauce from a bottle, I think your sauce recipe would have been better. Anyway, the amount of sauce used was insufficient so I diluted with dry vermouth which worked well. Vegetables cooked nicely. For myself, I found this a fairly low temperature recipe compared to the hot wok recipes, which was fine.