China · Chinese

Sweet potato in brown-sugar syrup

The sweet course among the Luoyang water-banquet accompaniments: sweet potato cut into diamond chunks, fried until gold, then finished with a brown-sugar and sweet-potato-starch syrup. Deep red, crisp outside and tender within. Public reference · home adaptation, not a historical original.

35 minutes · 4 servings · Easy

Sweet potato in brown-sugar syrup

Public reference · Home adaptation Sweet potato in syrup is one of the few sweet dishes among the 24, sitting with the eight accompanying courses. On a table otherwise built on sour-hot, salty, savoury soupy food, it functions as a palate cleanser. Published menus record the name only; this version follows public recipe sources and is not a one-to-one match to that menu. **This entry previously also cited a Zhihu column page (zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/492193137); in this pass Zhihu returned 403 to every non-browser client and the body could not be opened by either curl or web_fetch, so that source has been removed. The method here rests on the remaining openable sources listed above.****Adaptation**: this version is vegan, using vegetable oil and brown and white sugar with no stock, cream or animal products. The source tip states the syrup is only properly red if you use brown sugar, which is kept here. Another public recipe uses both brown and white sugar plus starch; this one uses sweet-potato starch for a clearer syrup. Sugar quantities, fry depth and syrup thickness are editorial for four. Cut the sweet potato to consistent sizes or it fries unevenly. The source page carries health claims about sweet potato, which are not carried over. Not kitchen-tested. This entry is vegan: sweet potato, sugar, starch and vegetable oil only, with no meat, egg, dairy or animal stock. Take care against hot-oil splatter while frying. 京细菜谱：洛阳水席之蜜汁红薯汤 — The full method: cut the sweet potato into diamonds, whisk starch with water, fry at 150°C until golden, then in another pot boil water, add the fried sweet potato, pour in the starch slurry stirring over low heat two minutes and sweeten with brown sugar. Tips: use brown sugar for the red colour, and cut the sweet potato to even sizes. https://www.jxcaipu.com/recipe/e140gc03.html 搜狐：洛阳水席"蜜汁红薯汤"，甜甜蜜蜜红红火火 — It is one of the few sweet dishes in the Luoyang water banquet; sweet potato is cut into batons or diamonds, fried until golden with a crisp skin, and a separate pot of brown sugar, white sugar and starch is boiled to a syrup before the fried pieces are added. https://www.sohu.com/a/512450488_121287722 AI-generated illustration; not kitchen-tested.

Ingredients

  • sweet potato, peeled and cut into diamonds500 g
  • brown sugar60 g
  • white sugar20 g
  • sweet-potato starch20 g
  • water700 ml
  • cooking oil for frying400 ml

Directions

  1. 1

    Peel the sweet potato, cut into lengths and then into diagonal diamond chunks. Whisk the sweet-potato starch with 50 ml water and set aside.

  2. 2

    Heat oil to about 150°C and fry the sweet potato 4 minutes until golden on both sides with a lightly crisp surface, then drain.

  3. 3

    In a separate pan, bring water, brown sugar and white sugar to a boil, then simmer 3 minutes until the sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens slightly.

  4. 4

    Pour in the sweet-potato starch slurry, stirring constantly to prevent lumps, and simmer 1 minute more until the syrup bubbles and coats the spoon.

  5. 5

    Turn off the heat, add the fried sweet potato and toss quickly so every piece is coated, then serve hot.

Source: WorldBite · public-reference adaptation · Source-attributed editorial adaptation; AI illustration; not an authenticated original recipe.