How to Make Chinese Barbecued Pork

[Music] you have here a four pound pork butt and we're gonna cut it into very thin slices now early on our testing we tried to cheat a little bit and make them a little thicker but that doesn't work you really need the thin slices so that the fat can melt and how you cut it matters I'm gonna cut it right down the middle I'm gonna trim away some of this extra fat after I've cut the slices because it's a little easier that way and so I'm gonna turn it on to its cut side and I'm going to cut this into three sections so you want a section that's an inch or less thick these thinner steaks will really cook through evenly a lot of that fat will render if there's any big pockets of fat I'm just gonna trim them out and a boning knife really makes quick work of this because it's a nice thin flexible blade see how flexible aid is and that means you can really skim off the fat without getting too much the meat all right so these look perfect yes they do all right now I'm gonna take a fork and I'm gonna prick them about ten times or so on each side this is just really gonna help the marinade get deep into the meat so now the pork is ready to be marinated I'm gonna use my favorite marinating tool here a plastic bag very fancy so we're gonna get this ready for the marinade and speaking of the marinade we'll make that next that sounds good so here we have a half a cup of sugar and to that we're gonna add half a cup of soy sauce now a lot of traditional recipes we saw use both light and dark soy sauce but we found that regular soy sauce worked just fine here next we're gonna add a quarter cup of dry sherry next this is six tablespoons of hoisin sauce that's a big flavor bomb right there we're gonna add two tablespoons of grated fresh ginger a little bit of garlic because garlic tastes good and everything sure does this is two cloves of garlic a little bit of sesame oil one of my all-time favorite ingredients or stewed sesame oh I just want it everything taste good that's a tablespoon this is a teaspoon of Chinese five-spice last but not least a little pepper and this is a quarter teaspoon of white ground pepper which has a much higher more fragrant note than black ground pepper it's we're just gonna whisk this together and before I marry this with the pork I'm gonna reserve a half a cup of that Mary because we're gonna make a glaze to baste with the pork just before serving and to make the glaze it takes about five minutes on the stovetop now we're gonna add a little honey this is 1/3 a cup of honey which of course helps the glaze stick to the meat and adds its own flavour and sweetness last but not least quarter cup of ketchup you know how I feel about catchin you love I love ketchup yeah sweet and sour and salty and it adds a really nice sort of fruity flavor to this we're gonna bring this to a simmer and let it cook on medium heat for about five minutes till it's nice and thickened and it measures about a cup and I'm leaving you in charge excellent all right meanwhile I'm going to take the rest of this marinade and I'm gonna pour it over all this pork in the bag I want to make sure I get all of it on the bowl the reason why I love these bags you can really press all the air out which helps the marinade really get all around that pork it also means that you don't have to use as much marinade yep okay now you have to let this marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to four hours the long you marinate it the more flavor it gets so I would always opt for the four hours so we're gonna put them in the refrigerator all right so the pork has been marinating for four hours and now it's time to cook it so you can see we have a rack set up here that's gonna allow for even airflow on both sides of the meat so you get more of that crispy char I also went ahead and lined to the pan with aluminum foil because that sticky glaze is a bear to clean up if it burns on the bottom of the pan you only do that once and also I spray to the rack really well with vegetable oil spray because that sticky sauce when it gets into all the nooks and crannies of the rack it's a mess it's not coming out now we messed around a lot with roasting temperatures high temperatures were great because you got a nice char on the outside but the meat was kind of tough low temperatures the reverse happened the meat was tender it had time to render the fat but he got no char on the top so we're gonna do a combination low to a nice render the fat and we're gonna finish under high with the Clay's all right to help the steaming in the beginning to render some of the fat then I add a quarter cup of water this also helps preventing drippings from burning and then I'm gonna cover it with foil we're gonna roast it for about an hour at 300 degrees now it's gonna be covered with the foil for the first 20 minutes then we're going to take the foil off and go for 40 minutes longer and then we're gonna broil it to finish Oh looking good is looking good all right if you could turn the broiler on for me please sounds good you see how they're nice and listening on top mm-hmm that's good flavor and good moisture but all that moisture means the glaze wouldn't stick right now and here we have our glaze that we reduced earlier and we want that on the pork that's right want to stick so this is what we're gonna do we're gonna throw this back under the broiler for about seven minutes to dry out the top slimmy and then we're gonna glaze it and broil it for a little longer and we're gonna do that on both sides so dry glaze flip dry glaze Drag Glee's flip dry Glee it's kind of gotta so that broiler is preheated and it's time to get going get that for you oh it's looking good those are nice and golden on the top little charring on the edge and as you said it's a little dried out on the top it's just what you want yes exactly so now it's time to glaze I'm gonna use about half a displays that we made and put it on the top and the sides how low pork this now goes back under the broiler for about five minutes or so until that glaze is nice and caramelized oh wow gorgeous I mean look at it it's just still bubbling on the top we broiled it and glazed it on both sides so that on the top and the bottom it looks this gorgeous gorgeous right but all this bubbling means it's very hot so we're gonna let them cool down and rest for at least 10 minutes before we slice in all right so this has rested for at least 10 minutes at least mm-hmm felt longer than that now I'm gonna slice it into nice tall thin bits oh and it's so juicy again because it's pork shoulder which just retains its juice so nicely oh look how juicy let me give you some choice pieces right from the middle here oh you know I'm gonna give you the end piece because that's super glam yeah I give myself the other end part of course we're serving this over sticky white rice cuz that's traditional yep it's also the perfect foil for all those big flavors hmm and all those pork juices baste the rice the rice at the end is a pretty good I'm gonna go right in for that end piece cuz it doesn't get much better than that huh almost like bacon but with a totally different flavor profile and that flavor profile is awesome this is a keeper does a keeper you're a keeper thanks for our foolproof cha see you at home cut pork butt into strips and marinate the meat in a sweet n salty mixture cook the pork on a rack over water then boil and glaze to build a crust cut into thin strips and serve with rice so from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a chinatown worthy Chinese barbecue pork most excellent thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 171,283

Rating: 4.9083214 out of 5

Keywords: chinese barbecued pork, char siu, chinese bbq pork, how to make char siu, char siu recipe, chinese pork recipe, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, cooking show, cooking tv show, cooking videos, chinese food

Id: eRWvWV0UtJI

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019