Cooking Around the World Part 3: China
Self-Care and Creativity Through Cooking: C is for China.
Happy Year of the Snake:
The Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) is a time to wish for good luck and prosperity in the coming year for oneself and others and was my inspiration for the Letter C.
I am literally forcing myself to cook and write this today because it seems the state of our country is not only headed down the wrong path, but we are already barreling down a very dark highway. Today is Sunday, February 2 and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter, which seems fitting.
How I am feeling on a day like today is the exact reason I chose this endeavor, and for an hour this morning, it truly worked. I was focused on my recipe and was able to distract myself for a bit.
According to chinesenewyear.net, the Lunar New Year officially began on January 29th, 2025, and kicked off what is known as the Spring Festival, which lasts about 15 days, so I am still within the window of being on time with this post. So, I am writing about cooking pig on a day celebrating a groundhog, during a two week span welcoming a snake. There is a metaphor in there somewhere, but I am too mentally tired to find it…
So let me get right into it. For this edition of Cooking Around the World, I chose what I consider a favorite takeout item that always seemed too difficult to try at home: Char Siu, or Chinese BBQ Pork. Not only is it delicious, it is red - the color that represents good luck and prosperity for the New Year. I had some trepidation about choosing this dish for China because a lot of Chinese food that people in the U.S. are most familiar with doesn’t necessarily have real Chinese roots. We love our General Tso’s, Lo Mein, and our Kung Pao (George likes his chicken spicy!), but those dishes most likely originated here. Char Siu is a Cantonese dish that has true origins in China, so I decided my pick was an authentic one.
I looked at a ton of recipes for this one and wound up choosing two that had similar ingredients - most that I already had in my pantry and fridge. The only ingredient I need to pick up was the fermented red bean curd, which I found easily at my local Asian grocery store (I am lucky to have a variety of different markets close-by). I almost chose a recipe that didn’t include this because I was unfamiliar with it, but thankfully I ignored myself. When I opened the jar, it became evident that this is a key ingredient - its sweet, pungent aroma screamed Chinese BBQ pork and BBQ spare ribs.
Even though this wound up being an all day recipe because of the marinating time, steps were pretty easy to follow. The ingredients I used are:
3 lb. pork shoulder sliced in one-pound slabs - look for pork butt or picnic pork*
1.5 tbsp garlic powder
6 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1.5 tbsp hoisin sauce
1.5 tbsp Shaoxing wine
2 cubes fermented red bean curd
1.5 tsp five spice powder
Drop of red food coloring (optional)
* I had purchased a 9-ish pound bone-in picnic pork and cut and trimmed the three slabs from the much larger roast. The rest I cooked in a slow cooker with garlic, rosemary, thyme, fennel, and onion to shred for roast pork sandwiches. Here are the basic instructions.
Mix the marinade ingredients and place the pork into a large Ziploc bag or glass container. Put about half a cup of the marinade aside. Cover the pork with the remaining marinade and let it marinade in the fridge for at least an hour and up to 24 hours. I let mine marinate from about 10 am - 4 pm and turned it a couple of times to make sure it was well covered with marinade.
About one hour before you want to start cooking, take the pork out to come to room temperature.
Line your baking pan with foil to help with clean up (it can get messy) and place the pork on a wire rack inside the pan and preheat your oven to 425° F. Add some water to the bottom of the pan (just enough to cover the bottom) to help prevent smoking as the sugar cooks and possible burns.
While the oven is warming, dissolve the honey in water on the stove to baste the pork. You can add a bit of the marinade, but if you do, make sure to bring the liquid to a boil. Actually, what I would recommend is taking the marinade that you set aside in Step 1 and cook it down to thicken it. This turned out to be the key - you can use it for a dipping sauce or use it in the last baste or broil.
Roast the pork at 425° for fifteen minutes, then baste both sides, flip it an return to the oven for fifteen more minutes. Repeat the basting and flipping to equal 30 minutes baking time. Add more water to the pan if needed.
Repeat the above, but for ten more minutes on each side, for a total of fifty minutes cooking time.
Increase the temperature to 450° and baste and flip for three to five minutes on each side to brown. Keep an eye that it doesn’t burn.
Remove from the oven and let the pork sit for ten minutes (just as a precaution, safe internal pork temperature is 145°)
Slice and serve. You can layer the pork over rice, with a side of stir-fried veggies, or even in a wrap or moo shoo pancake or add to ramen.
So, as I was basting and flipping, I was a little worried about how this was going to turn out. The first time I took it out, it did not look BBQ’y or sticky the way you would expect it to. By the time it was done cooking, browning, and resting, and I finally sliced into it, the flavor was there and it was pretty good, but the texture of the sauce was not where I wanted it to be.
What I would suggest is using the half-cup of marinade that was set aside and cooking it down until it becomes think like a BBQ sauce and then using it as a drizzle. I went back and added this suggestion to the steps. It made a real difference and made it even more delicious. Drizzling will also allow you to manage how much sauce goes on the meat.
For a recipe that does take some time, not all of it active cooking, but possibly shopping, marinating, watched and basted cooking, sauce-making, etc., this was a success, especially with the drizzle. The fatty cut of the pork helps to keep it moist, even when you reheat. My three pounds of port shoulder made a ton of slices, so I will plan to freeze some of it to use another time. Maybe sliced in some ramen or for a quick stir-fry.
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The recipe sources I used include Made With Lau, The Woks of Life, and Cooking For My Soul.
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