From "Grandpa's Kitchen 2" by Steve Lee. I like his recipes as he has quite high standards for his Chinese cooking. If you want to find out more about this book, refer to my post on
Please recommend some cookbooks (or websites, YT etc).
Grandpa's Barbecue Pork
Ingredients
2 pieces pork shoulder butt
19g Su wood
maltose
Marinade
1 tbsp ground bean paste
2 tbsp Hoi Sin sauce
3 tbsp light brown sugar
2 tbsp Su wood infusion
1/2 cube fermented tarocurd
1 cube fermented beancurd
2 tbsp light soy sauces
3 tbsp Chinese rose wine
2 tbsp sesame paste
2 tbsp grated garlic
1 tsp fermented black beans (finely chopped)
Method
1. Boil 1 cup of water in a pot. Add Su wood and cook until the water turns red. Decant the infusion and let cool.
2. Make a few cuts on the pork without cutting all the way through.
3. Mix the marinade well. Pour over the pork and rub evenly with your hands. Marinate for 5 to 6 hours.
4. Preheat an oven to 225 °C. Line a baking tray with aluminium foil and brush oil thinly on it. Put the pork in the baking tray. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
5. Warm up the maltose over a pot of simmering water. Brush the maltose evenly over the pork. Bake the pork for 5 more minutes. Let cool slightly. Slice and serve.
Grandpa's Tips
-- If you want your barbecue pork to be fatty, just tell the butcher you want fatty shoulder butt cut.
-- You can get Su wood from Chinese herbal stores. It is a natural red colouring.
--- End of recipe from book ---
My own notes to the recipe above.
Su wood
蘇木 is also known as Sappan wood. I found a listing on Amazon with the picture (
Sappan Wood).
Fermented tarocurd is also known as fermented red bean curd.
The Chinese rose wine would be Mei Gui Lu.
For a more gourmet version, you'd probably use Iberico pork butt.
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For an even more gourmet version of char siu made with iberico pork, refer to this video but it doesn't tell you the exact amounts or even what all 18 ingredients are.
If you are looking to add the dry mandarin skin as shown in the video, it's probably not just any regular dried mandarin skin (chenpi
陳皮). The best quality chenpi is made from the sun-dried ripe peels of tangerines from Xinhui District in China. It's aged at least 3 years but the most fragrant in my opinion is aged around 12-15 years (fruity fragrance). If you can find chenpi aged 5 to 8 years, that's also good stuff. The more aged, the more rare and costly. The really old stuff has a medicinal quality which helps with coughs. I have some chenpi aged 50 years from a vendor in Hong Kong (very expensive). The fragrant is very different as it gains a more earthy rather than fruity smell. Anyways, I'm not an expert on chenpi but I enjoy this ingredient in Chinese cooking.