Tip - Sweet and Sour Pork

For the past few weeks I've been working on a new project that has left me little time for cooking. (On the bright side, that project involves dumplings and will be revealed soon!) In the meantime, I thought this would be a good opportunity to update a recipe for sweet and sour pork that I first shared about 5 years ago.   Since 2008 I've made this multiple times, and retested it over and over for my cookbook. It's the best I've found for making crispy pork that's reminiscent of takeout without all the grease and gloppiness. I hope you enjoy it! -------------  I grew up with two kinds of sweet and sour pork. Like any American child living in close proximity to a Chinese takeout, I ate a good amount of ping pong ball-sized pork laced with red food coloring. At home, my mother would also prepare her version, using bone-in chunks of pork flavored with a subtler orange-vinegar sauce.  In Beijing, I once took a home-style cooking class in which the teacher revealed that her  secret ingredient for sweet and sour pork, also what "the better restaurants in Beijing use", was a bottle of locally produced ketchup. Why not the American brand Heinz? Too sweet. Sweet and sour pork is thought to have originated in Guangdong province. But now that the Cantonese have flung themselves afar, each place they have landed has its own local variation. I'm sure Canada, the UK, Austalia, and other immigration hot spots have slightly different sweet and sour composites.