Babi Pangang - Recipe for Crispy and Juicy Asian Style Pork Chops (2024)

Every morning, before getting out of bed, I first think of the food I’m going to make that day. 😉 That way I can plan my day around buying food, preparing it and the actual time in the kitchen. Today we definitely have to make babi pangang.

I am not just a food blogger but also a web designer. It’s not healthy for my body to work behind a computer all day. That’s why I mostly work in the morning until noon. Then I go out for groceries for the day’s recipe. 😉

This morning my husband came up with an idea about dinner tonight: babi pangang! ‘But the Pisang Susu way’. Whatever that may be. I have to figure it out myself. Fine! That’s exactly how I like it.

Watch my recipe in this video, or read on and see the recipe in text and pictures.

Babi Pangang

I lovebabi pangangcrisp and well marinated. The sweet and sour sauce has to provide that specific babi pangang flavor. Let’s get started!

This recipe is enough for 3 people and takes 1,5 hours to make.

Ingredients

600-700 grams of pork chops (about 4 pieces)

Marinade

• 3 tablespoons salty soy sauce (Kikkoman)
• 4 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce (Kecap ABC)
• 2 tablespoons of sweet baby (stem) ginger
• 2 centimeters of fresh ginger
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 teaspoons 5-spices mix (a mix of star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper and fennel seeds
• juice of 1/2 a lemon

Sauce

• 200 grams of caster sugar
• 1 dl of wine vinegar
• 1 cm of ginger
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons tomato puree
• 2 tablespoons of water
• 1 chili pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 pepper

Prepare the meat

1. Cut the bone out of the pork chops
2. Cut the onions into pieces and put it with the garlic and finely chopped ginger in a jug and blend with an emersion blender or food processor
3. Add the sweet and salty soy sauce, the 5-spices mix and the stem ginger in a bowl
4. Add the pork chops and mix well
5. Squeeze half the lemon over it and stir again
6. Leave this as long as possible – you can also marinate the meat overnight

Prepare the sauce

1. Cut the chili pepper and ginger in fine pieces.
2. Add all the ingredients except for the cornstarch in a pan and warm it up.
3. When the sugar has melted, add the cornflour that is diluted with one teaspoon of water.
4. Let it thicken gently while stirring once in a while.

Roast the meat

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees
2. Remove the meat from the marinade and let most of the marinate drip off
3. Cook in a little butter until they are seared close (1 or 2 minutes on each side)
4. Place the pork chops on a rack with a drip tray underneath
5. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes
6. Then turn on the fan and upper grill and grill for 10 minutes until crispy
7. Chop meat into strips
8. Pour warmed up sauce over it just before serving

I take out the bone of the pork chops and place them in a large bowl. I add the sweet and salty soy sauce and the sweet stem ginger.

I blend the onions, garlic, and fresh ginger with my emersion blender.

I mix it with the meat and squeeze half a lemon over it in the process.

Now I add 2 teaspoons of the Chinese 5-spices mix. It contains star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel.

I mix it with the meat again and leave the chops to marinate for a few hours. You can marinate the meat a day before too. It will only get better.

Babi Pangang Sauce

I do not have to wait with the sauce because I can warm it up anytime. Lots of sugar goes in.

For the sour layer in flavor, it needs wine vinegar and tomato puree. The sauce becomes more interesting immediately.

I do not have enough white caster sugar anymore, so I use my dark caster sugar. It will make the color of the sauce a lot darker and it tastes great.

When you only use white sugar, the sauce stays much redder in color because of the tomatoes.

I buy some good quality tomato puree; one that is not too acidic. Sometimes there is so much citric acid in the puree for preserving that I do not like it anymore. I by concentrated pomodori tomato puree.

I add the sugar, salt, water, wine vinegar, tomato puree, black pepper and chopped ginger in a saucepan and I warm it up.

The sugar melts quickly. Now I add the chili pepper. Of course, you can make the sauce as spicy as you like it.

When everything is well mixed. I add the cornstarch to make the sauce a bit thicker.

I’ve added a tablespoon of water to the cornstarchto make it into a smooth paste before adding it to the sauce. This will prevent lumps.

I let the sauce simmer for a minute until it gets thicker. Remember that if it cools, it will thickeneven more.

Roast

Back to the meat. I set the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

I take the meat out of the marinade and let the sauce drip off for a few seconds before baking it in some butter in the pan. I just bake the pork chops for two minutes. The skin needs to close, so they stay moist inside.

Then I place them on a grid on top of an oven dish (to catch the fluids). I use my ‘cake cooler’ for this. It works fine. I make sure that the chops are well distributed so they can be roasted fully (top and bottom).

Oven

Now I place my chops in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes I turn on the grill and the hot air in my oven and I let my pork chops grill for another 10 minutes.

Keep an eye on them. The meat needs to get crips but it cannot burn too much. If the corners get too dark, cut it away.

Serve

Now they can be chopped in big chunks. The meat is crisp on the outside and very juicy inside. Delicious.

Finally, I can pour the delicious sweet-sour sauce over the meat. It looks so beautiful.

I love the shiny, black color of the sauce and it has that typical babi pangang flavor. The 5-spices mix works well!

We eat our babi with a cucumber acar, white rice, and some krupuk. Lovely!