Blogwatch: Homemade Char Siu
Marc of No Recipes marinates his char siu, or Cantonese-style barbecue pork, for 48 hours before roasting. A mix of hoisin, chili, oyster and dark soy sauces give the meat its gorgeous red color, and maltose (liquid barley sugar with a tar-like consistency) adds crazy, alluring sheen.
Don't take your chances with the "overly sweet, grisly, artificially colored" char siu sometimes found in Chinatown. Buy yourself a slab of pork belly--one of the cheapest cuts there are--and follow Marc's recipe to make your own.
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3 Comments:
If only I had 48 hours to work on this, but being in school and butting up against two exams in two days, I'm not exactly flush with time (though, you'll notice, I am still reading and commenting on SE). This is totally something I'm trying when I come back from the holidays though.
shoneyjoe at 4:59PM on 12/16/08
"slab of pork belly--one of the cheapest cuts there are"
HUH? Where do you shop? Pork Belly isn't cheap anywhere I go, and isn't even sold at most big supermarkets. I usually find it most at asian markets, and it's never a cheap cut.
Char Siu is usually made with cheaper cuts like boneless shoulder or other random fatty (MUST HAVE FAT) pieces. Isn't belly a little too fatty for Char Siu?
peekpoke at 10:19PM on 12/16/08
@peekpoke: Marc writes, "For the pork belly, try to get pork belly that’s leaner that what you’d get for braising. Ideally you’ll have thick layers of very marbled meat with thin strips of fat in between. You could also use pork shoulder, but I prefer pork belly for the extra fat content. Whatever you do, please don’t make this a pork loin (you’ll end up with pork jerky)."
I buy my pork belly at Jeffrey's in Essex Market, where it costs less than $3 a pound.
Michele Humes at 10:23PM on 12/16/08