How to Cook Authentic Cantonese Char Siu Roast Pork from scratch (蜜汁叉烧)

today we're making Joshua barbecue pork a Cantonese classic so for this video we wanted to show you two ways to do this how to cook it from scratch but also an easy way in case the from scratch method seems a bit intimidating so to make cha su we're gonna need some cashew sauce first the easy way use jasio sauce Lee Kum Kee makes real solid sauce and you can find it all over the world from scratch though is much tastier forgive me for a quick back story here see from scratch cos you had sort of been my white whale for a while because if you search through Chinese sources usually what you're gonna find is people using bottled cha Co as a base and adding a whole bunch of other ingredients to it moisture sauce sugar spices so forth but I want to know how to make the sauce itself I'd seen some recipes from international food writers but they always seem to produce a result that was never really chassis so we tossed that question of how to get the real deal old style chassis sauce to Steph's food-obsessed Cantonese family they shot us back the traditional base with one ingredient that I hadn't seen before Mincher or as you might know it red miso this is the key ingredient that makes chassis chassis from there we needed the chassis spice mixture and then luckily it's based off the Cantonese way spices and we found the proper old style mix and one of our absolutely ancient Cantonese cookbook so finally to start our chassis sauce we're going to mince up some of the white part of green onion and some ginger rather is on medium in the smallest amount of oil you can muster for about a minute until they start to smell real nice then add in some Liao Joe some rice wine stir that around and then add water and soy sauce we're adding 1/4 cup of soy sauce here 2 teaspoons of which is dark soy sauce and the remainder being light now for the spices as you can see we've got like a mountain of different spices here I'll list all these off but before I do just know that probably only about 3 of them are absolutely critical first star anise will use about 8 to 10 of these second cinnamon or cassia bark will add in two sticks and lastly something that might be harder for you guys broad to find shad yang or sand ginger powder this is one of four plants that sometimes called Kalinga luckily this ingredient seems to be used quite a bit in Malay and Indonesian cooking you should be able to find this online under the name cutlery powder awesome ingredient by the way to me it sort of tastes like love child of ginger and white pepper the other ingredients we have are dry at an aged tangerine peel prepped by soaking and scratching off the bitter white pith whole cloves black cardamom licorice root and full hongwol in general I wouldn't be overly paranoid about balance here if you can only get a couple of these other ingredients but not others just use what you can find dump all those in the pot except for the SHA Jeon let it simmer on low and now we'll just play the waiting game this has got a simmer for at least 30 minutes but here I let it go for 60 so relax have a beer and add in touch of water if it's reducing a little bit too much what we're doing here is basically making what's called a loofah which is a Chinese braising base there's a whole category of awesome Cantonese food that's built around this sort of braise which we'll talk about in a future video so after an hour this liquid should be really aromatic and just taste absolutely incredible now we're gonna strain out all those aromatics and spices but reserve the liquid so add 3/4 of a cup of your liquid and then to that just add rock sugar half a teaspoon of that Xianyang tablespoon of liquid that comes with red fermented tofu that red fermented tofu is not only gonna help us arrive at that chassis of color but I'll also add a nice hour under tongue also add in your meter the red miso your choice of mentor is gonna be really important here we're using an awesome one from Zheng Chun out out of Guangzhou that still makes it according to the old methods if you're in China another brand that's good is function hua if you can't find those or if you're abroad using a Japanese red miso paste will also work great we're also going to be adding in a quarter of a teaspoon of Honshu fun that we ground up this is red yeast rice and it'll help us add some color this is totally optional you can skip it if you like or you could also toss in a teaspoon of Hungarian sweet paprika for the same effect we're going to let this simmer and bring those flavors together until the rock sugar dissolves if it's simmering away a little bit too much at a table spoon or so of your reserved Liu Shui braising liquid once that rock sugar dissolves we're gonna hit it with our sweetener Maya Tang or maltose maltose is a Chinese syrup that's used in a few roast dishes probably most famously Peking Duck it's mild not overly sweet and doesn't really have any strong malt flavor it's really going to help give this sauce its characteristic Sheen if you've never worked with this before I swear to god this might be the stickiest substance known to mankind if you can't find those try natural honey with no sugars added mix that together and then jar it up congratulations you now have a traditional homemade pasta sauce that puts Lee Kum Kee to shame now let's use the stuff we're using two cuts of pork here the traditional cut is called mayro which is basically a Boston but some fat still attached to it we also really like pork neck jouging row here and some people also like pork belly which is cool too you're gonna cut these into strips about one inch high and two inches wide if you've ever been to a chance hunting you know those iconic strips of chassis that they hang up in the window that's what we're aiming for here now we got to marinate this our marinade is three parts chansu sauce either Lee Kum Kee or homemade and one part soy sauce poke some holes in the pork to help the marinade seep in toss it in a ziploc bag massage it and at least overnight 48 hours is ideal especially if you're using this mayro Boston but cut which is a tougher meet this longer marinade time is gonna be really important okay so now that it's a day later we wanted to show you two techniques to cook your cha Co one using an oven and one minima king the Chinese restaurant oven using western-style charcoal grill and a Dutch oven I really like this setup here what we're doing is setting up a two zone heat on a charcoal grill and then nestling a cast-iron Dutch oven inside the cool side then you can skewer the ends of your chassis and hang them up in your Dutch oven to get a quite similar cooking method as the restaurants a couple soaked lychee or apple wood chips might be cool here too a trick to make these cook evenly is to lay like a wet paper towel over top of the chassis otherwise the top of these strips are gonna burn place the chashu strips in your grill and wait this is likely to take a while and because charcoal can be pretty variable an instant-read thermometer will probably be handy alternatively you can absolutely use an oven preheat your oven to 275 degrees all that are outside China I'm really jealous of your ovens they'll be much easier to cook than this little a halogen sucker but the choice you in a roasting tray or just get creative like we did here for the oven we're gonna roast this for one hour whatever method you use we're gonna be taking the toss you out and basting this a few times when it's cooking our basting sauce is going to be a mix of one part Chasseur sauce with one part honey this is what makes this major cha cha or honey cha Co we're gonna base this three times when it's cooking for the oven I do this exactly every 15 minutes the 15-minute mark the 30 minute mark and the 45 minute mark with the grill it's a little less exact here I did it once about every 20 minutes but just baste it when it looks like it's getting little dry once the chassis is done brushed the chassis with a little bit more of the chassis sauce and some oil then let it rest preferably in a hanging position like this this has got to rest at least 30 minutes before chopping now that the chassis is rested cut them up it's a nice roasted chassis you have a pork feast or save them and toss them into noodle soups bounces or stir fries hope you guys give this a try if you like the recipe subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos and as always there's gonna be a detailed in-depth recipe in the reddit comment that I've linked in the description

Channel: Chinese Cooking Demystified

Views: 600,292

Rating: 4.8859706 out of 5

Keywords: char siu, chashao, 叉烧, cantonese, chinese, cooking, recipe, authentic, from scratch, oven, grill, lee kum kee, 自制叉烧酱

Id: g2-FFux9EbU

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2017