Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin Fillet Roast

A sweet and sour pork tenderloin roast, cooked to rosy pink perfection in less than half an hour, complete with a sauce with huge flavour.

Sweet and Sour Pork Roast.

Growing up sweet and sour pork meant one thing, a really astringent and sweet, lurid sauce with deep fried pork balls.

Now I am not entirely sure that I ever really liked it but I do adore sweet and sour dishes and this recipe is my third take on sweet and sour pork.

Of course I have sweet and sour pork balls, although they contain much more pork than the batter heavy options I remember growing up.

Then I turned my attention to sweet and sour pork chops complete with a majestic pineapple ring, and most recently sweet and sour prawns.

This sideways glance at Chinese sweet and sour pork uses one of my favourite cuts of meat. Pork Tenderloin or fillet and roasts it in the oven with red peppers and onions in a rich a sticky sweet and sour sauce.

All told it will take you around 30 minutes to cook.

It is also arguably the healthiest my sweet and sour pork recipes are gonna get! It is not fried and uses the leanest cut of pork!

Ingredient Advice.

Most of the ingredients here should be easy to source without comment.

However, the centrepiece of this dish is the pork tenderloin. A cut of meat that features in dishes as diverse as my Char Siu Pork and roast pork tenderloin through to pork medallions with camembert sauce.

A piece of meat that I believe should be served rosy pink because it is very lean and very tender. Overcooking it turns it chewy and hides some of its very gentle pork flavour.

This will typically take between 12 and 15 minutes in a hot oven depending on the size of the loin.

I aim for an internal temperature of 57-58°C, which is around 135°F for those who work that way.

Then leave to rest before slicing into medallions, do not skip the resting it plays a huge part!

After 3-5 minutes of resting the pork will reach and hold a temperature of around 63°C (145°F). This is within the safe temperature zone for pork.

A 350-400g piece of tenderloin is perfect for 2. If you want 4-6-8 it is so simple to add more as you go.

This means you can scale this recipe whilst adding no additional cooking time!

Serving Suggestions.

This sweet and sour pork tenderloin is shown here with a simple egg fried rice.

But it is superb with a host of stir fried vegetables.

My stir-fried broccoli would be great in Autumn and stir-fried asparagus makes an amazing side in spring.

I also confess to being rather partial to serving this recipe with some simple crispy fried potatoes.

It is equally as good with some simple soy sauce noodles!