Chinese Barbecue Pork (Char Siu) Recipe - How to Make Chinese-Style BBQ Pork

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with chinese barbecue pork that's right i'm very excited to show you my take on chinese barbecue pork or char siew if you want to save a few characters on Twitter or is this our Xu sorry sue or char Xu I'm probably saying them both wrong about regardless of what you call it this stuff is very delicious and as you can see extremely shiny and as you may have heard me say before people love shiny food so with that let's go ahead get started by putting together our Chinese barbecue sauce and that's going to involve adding the following ingredients to a saucepan and we'll go ahead and start with some hoisin sauce which like me isn't very attractive but it is effective and then we're also going to dump in some ketchup which if i'm not mistaken is actually a Chinese invention and then we're definitely gonna need a whole bunch of soy sauce as well as some brown sugar and I'm using light brown sugar here but the dark will work and then for a little extra sweetness we'll also add some honey and if that look kind of runny that's because I had to heat the jar to get it out I always feel like I have to explain that stuff cuz people will email me saying hey that doesn't look like honey but anyway let's continue by adding a little bit of Chinese wine either rice wine or plum wine and if you can't find that you could use sake which is where I'm using or are here even some dry sherry will work and then we'll also toss in a few cloves of crushed garlic and then as far as seasonings go we're gonna go ahead and add a spoon of Chinese five-spice which is one of the signature flavors in this as well as some freshly ground black pepper and a little touch of cayenne for good luck and then last but not least one very optional ingredient a very tiny amount of pink salt and no that's not Himalayan pink salt this is actually the pink curing salt I made you buy for the ham video and I'm going to talk about that on the blog but it is optional and then what we'll do is take this to the stove and place it over medium-high heat we will whisk that all together and then all we're gonna do here is let this come up to a boil and let it cook for exactly one minute and believe it or not that's it as soon as that mixture is boil for about 60 seconds we'll simply turn it off and maybe give it a stir and then all we have to do before we can use that is let it cool down to room temp and while we're waiting for that what we'll do is go ahead and prep our pork and while you can pretty much use any part of the pig for this recipe my favorite option would be a big old piece of pork shoulder pork loin is also very popular but for me it's a little too lean okay as you can see the shoulder has a good amount of fat which means we're gonna be able to barbecue it for a lot longer without it drying out so that is my recommendation but of course that's up to you you are the tyronn lue of your Chinese barbecue and as far as prep goes here I'm simply going to attempt to cut this three pound roast into four equal sized pieces so I'm going to split it in half lengthwise like this and then I'll cut each of those halves in half and as usual if there's any natural separation we will use that to help us guide our cut and for me this is kind of an ideal size since we're cutting this small enough to get lots of surface area but not so small where we're gonna risk the meat drying out but of course having said that it really doesn't matter as long as your pieces are consistently sized and will cook at the same rate you can go ahead and cut that any way you want and then what we'll do once our pork is prepped is go ahead and combine it with our sauce assuming of course has cooled down to room temp but before we do that I'm gonna go ahead and add one more very special very secret ingredient a spoon of red food coloring oh yeah it's just our red velvet cake anymore so I'm gonna go ahead and add one spoon of this very optional red food coloring which is gonna help give our pork that signature mahogany color oh and if you're wondering if red food coloring is safe I'm really not sure but I assume so and then what we'll do once that's mixed in is go ahead and transfer in our pork and toss them around until they're thoroughly coated always of course being conscious of any nooks and crannies that may not have any sauce on them if for something like this it's usually not a bad idea to transfer it into a zip-top bag but I happen to have room in my fridge so I'm gonna leave it in this bowl so we'll go ahead and combine our pork with our sauce which I guess technically right now is a marinade and I'll cover that with a piece of plastic and then what we're going to do is let that marinate in the fridge from anywhere between four and twelve hours and while I'm generally not into long marination times this is one recipe I think you should let sit overnight which is exactly what I did and then the next day we can go ahead and pull that out of the marinade sort of wiping off the excess as I transfer it onto this pan speaking of excess we're definitely gonna save all that extra sauce for future glazing / and then even though our marinade had a good amount of soy and poison I do like to fairly generously salt the surface before this goes on the grill so that's what I'm doing here I'm gonna sprinkle each side with some kosher salts and then once our pork has been properly panned up and seasoned I'm gonna head out back and throw this on the grill and by the way if you're gonna use a grill for this it has to be over indirect heat as you may be able to see the ceramic grill I use has this sort of heat diffuser which protects the meat but if you don't have one of these type of grills I'm gonna give you all the options I'm a blog post including how to do in the oven which actually comes out quite nicely so we'll go ahead and place our pork down over indirect heat and we'll go ahead and cook this covered adjusting our vents to maintain a temperature somewhere between 275 and 300 all right closer to 275 is better and we will barbecue this Park for a couple hours until it's beautifully caramelized an ideally reached an internal temperature between 185 and 190 and what I'll usually do is place it down and leave it on for about 45 minutes or so before flipping them over and then once I have those turned over I'll go ahead and give them a brushing with our sauce which we don't have to boil before we brush on since this sauce is gonna be cooked on but if you're planning on brushing some of this on the cooked meat which we are you definitely want to boil it first and I'll remind you that later but for now let's go ahead and brush it on and we will continue that same process of letting it cook maybe giving him a turn brushing on some more sauce until like I said we've reached an internal temperature of about 185 to 190 which for me took about two and a half hours oh and by the way just so there's no confusion if you're used to barbecuing your pork shoulder until it's soft and succulent and falling apart this is not that all right the final product here is gonna be way closer to like a ham or a roast pork then it would be to like a pulled pork so just something to keep in mind but anyway like I said I cooked mine for about two and a half hours to an internal temp of about 185 and if everything's gone according to plan it should look something like this okay ideally it's fully caramelized and absolutely gorgeous and we'll go ahead and pull it off the grill and head inside where it looks like the color change but it didn't that's just my suspect lighting skills and then if we want before we transfer this onto our serving platter we can go ahead and glazes me one last time but as I mentioned earlier if we're gonna use this sauce on the cooked meat we have to have boiled it first otherwise you might be looking at a stomachache or even a lawsuit but anyway I glaze that up with some more sanitized sauce before transferring it onto a platter that I garnished with some grilled green onions since our coals were already hot and that's it what I assume is my totally unauthentic take on Chinese barbecue pork is done and I could look at that all day but a better idea would be to slice it up and go in for a taste and thanks to that little pinch of curing salt and our secret optional ingredient our red food coloring this stuff should look very close to what you see in your friendly neighborhood Chinese takeout place so I'm gonna go ahead and slice this up and see how I did and while this is truly a beautiful style of barbecued pork I finally taste and texture just as impressive all right just a great balance between the sweetness and the saltiness with both of those being elevated by the smokiness Plus that little hint of exotic aromatic spice in the background just absolutely gorgeous looking and tasting and of course what to serve this with our on is so obvious I won't even go into it okay anyway you'd serve any other kind of barbecued pork or ham will work here although have you said that I'm gonna take out with a little bit of a tease since one and if I master the steamed bun I'm gonna show you that video because that is by far my favorite way to enjoy this okay pile a few of those slices on a steamed bun and drizzle over some hot Chinese mustard and maybe some chopped green onion and that my friends is just an incredibly amazing bite of food but anyway that's it my method for doing Chinese barbecue pork not only is this insanely delicious and pretty easy to produce it may also bring you some luck since in China the color red symbolizes prosperity and communism but mostly prosperity so for those reasons and more I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,503,656

Rating: 4.8929443 out of 5

Keywords: Chinese, Barbecue, Pork, Char Siu, Chinese-Style, BBQ, meat, grilled, red, take-out, chef, john, foodwishes, summer, party, food, cooking, recipe, recipes, sauce, marinade, marinate

Id: IT7dUC-8PR0

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Can't wait to see his take on steamed buns. My Chinese in-laws make and love this and it would be nice to offer a different version.

It's a bit like bao if I'm not mistaken. The dumpling piece is too laborious but I'm guessing Chef John will have some shortcuts I can use.

[u/ToumeyP]

I love Chef John from Foodwishes.com