Tangsuyuk (Sweet and Sour Pork)

Tangsuyuk is the Korean name for a Chinese sweet-and-sour meat dish. Writing in Pressian in 2016, Chinese-studies professor Im Dae-geun explains it as the Korean reading of tangcu rou (糖醋肉): tang, sugar, came to mean sweet, and cu, vinegar, came to mean sour. He adds that in Chinese dish names an unqualified rou, meat, means pork, since other meats have to be named outright. The National Institute of Korean Language's standard dictionary writes the word with the characters 糖水肉, marking the middle syllable as an irregular reading, and defines the dish as beef or pork coated in starch and fried, then covered with a thickened sauce of vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and vegetables.

Like jajangmyeon and jjamppong, it reached Korea with the Chinese, mostly from Shandong, who settled around Incheon after the 1880s and opened restaurants. A 2016 Seoul Shinmun feature by Kim Kyung-woon places it on the menus of upscale Chinese restaurants during the colonial period, well before the noodle shop became an everyday neighborhood fixture. Today it is the standard dish to order alongside noodles when a group shares a table or a delivery order. The history of this cuisine, including the good-natured argument over whether to pour the sauce on or dip into it, is covered in Korean-Chinese food.

The Korean restaurant style has a few signatures. The batter is usually made from potato or corn starch that has been soaked in water until it settles, so the drained wet starch clings to the meat and fries up hard and glassy rather than bready, and the pieces are fried twice for extra crunch. The sauce is clear and glossy, thickened with starch and full of carrot, onion, cucumber or green pepper and often fruit such as pineapple. See twigim deep-frying.

• Protein and thiamin: lean pork loin is a good source of protein and of thiamin (vitamin B1).
• Some vegetables: carrot, onion and cucumber in the sauce add color and a little vitamin A, though not enough to count as a vegetable side. Pair it with namul or kimchi.
• Best shared: it is traditionally ordered as one platter for the table, which keeps an individual portion modest.

• Bu-meok or jjik-meok: sauce poured over the pork (bu-meok) or served on the side for dipping (jjik-meok).
• Beef tangsuyuk: the standard dictionary and recipe writers alike note that beef can stand in for pork, using sirloin or rib eye.
• Sauce garnishes: the dictionary definition names only vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and vegetables; restaurant and home cooks commonly add pineapple and green pepper, as in The Korea Herald's recipe.