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Ok, so I was strolling through Chinatown today, and walked by a Chinese BBQ joint just as the door opened and caught a massive whiff of char sui aroma, and just thought "Ok, this is going to happen. I just bought a 4 pound pork butt, broke it down into small-ish strips, and grabbed what seems like a million different ingredients that I've read go into char sui. I've got soy sauce, hoisin sauce, fermented red bean curd, sesame oil, sherry honey, and more pork than I've ever had at one time. Now what the hell do I do? There are a few commonalities in all of the recipes I've read. Marinating the pork overnight being one of them. Other than that though, they all seem radically different. Some recipes call for broiling the pork for a relatively short time, basting with the reserved marinade. Some call for a much longer bake with tons of basting. Some call for no basting at all. Is there any consensus on the best way to do this?
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Sep 18, 2011 21:48
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:33 |
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Mach420 posted:Assuming that you don't have a grill or smoker, do it in the oven. After the marinade, put it on a wire rack over a pan so that it doesn't sit in the juices. You want the outsides to brown and char slightly, after all. You don't want to braise it. Sounds like a plan. How long and at what temperature do you usually put it in for?
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Sep 19, 2011 01:46
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I just finished my first batch of char sui. The results seem to be a bit mixed. I baked it on a rack in the oven at 325-350 for about 40 minutes, turning and basting a few times, then stuck the pork under the broiler for a few minutes, flipping and basting frequently, to build up a nice layer of sauce. On one hand, the sticky glaze is spot on and tastes great. However, the meat itself is a lot chewier than what I typically get in Chinatown. Normally, I get it in a soup, so maybe that tenderizes it or something, but it's definitely not the super-tender stuff I'm used to.
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Sep 20, 2011 02:17
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Mach420 posted:You may have made it out of a boston butt. Those are usually used for braising and barbecue, aka the low and slow type of cooking, which melts all of the fats and connective tissues inside of it. Otherwise, you get a ton of chewy tendons inside of it. Yeah, I used pork butt. A few recipes I found used tenderloin, but I wanted something like the char sui at my favourite places, which tends to be pretty fatty. Would that be a separate cut, or are the restaurants just using butt but cooking it in a different way?
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Sep 20, 2011 03:20
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drat, I was worried that might be it: country-style ribs are a cut, like large briskets and decent shortribs, that are tough to find in Canada for whatever reason. I'll see if I can hunt some down: I still have tons of the char sui marinade/sauce ingredients left over so I might as well try as many times as possible to nail this. Thanks for the tips!
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Sep 20, 2011 12:08
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:33 |
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Ok, I just had my first actual meal of char sui, and it came out much better than I originally thought. Maybe the piece I tried was just overdone; the rest of it is actually quite tender. It doesn't have that bright red hue a lot of takeout char sui has, but I couldn't be bothered to go out and buy red food colouring just to replicate that. Definitely needs a bit of tweaking, but I'm really happy with it, for a first try.  Just chopped some up and threw it on rice with some steamed gai-lan for an easy meal. 
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Sep 21, 2011 00:17
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