Char Siu Chinese Barbecue Pork

This lovely red "Char Siu Chinese Barbecue Pork" recipe is just the thing to try for dinner any day of the week. The bright red color of the char sui is achieved by adding artificial color because the dark ingredients used in the marinade, so the color intensifies the color of the pork and gives the meat its characteristic hue, red is also the color Chinese associate with good luck and fortune.

Pork shoulder is generally used to make char sui but you can a popular cut of pork, the belly. Some of the ingredients you will need for this Char Siu Chinese Barbecue Pork recipe include pork belly sliced in half lengthways (reduces thickness and more of the marinade can be absorbed), crushed garlic cloves, finely diced grated ginger and peanut oil. Some of the ingredients you will need for the Char Siu marinade include honey, hoisin sauce, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, Chinese rose wine, salt and fermented bean curd (red). To start add all the char siu marinade sauce ingredients together into a saucepan, heat it up and stir well until all the ingredients are blended together. Then transfer into a bowl to cool approximately 20 minutes. Marinade the pork with some of the char siu sauce and the garlic and ginger. Cover and refrigerate for at least eight hours or overnight, turning the pork a few times. Add some peanut oil to remaining char sui sauce and keep covered in refrigerator (this will be used to baste pork when roasting). Next preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, roast the pork for ten minutes then turn and baste in remaining marinade, roast for another ten minutes and then turn and baste in remaining marinade again. Next turn up oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and then roast for a little longer (turning up the heat at the final cooking stage provides charred texture to pork).

This recipe blog is by Ai-Ling (pronounced eye-ling. The site is named after the Tool song Eon Blue Apocalypse which is off their third album Lateralus. This is because she likes metal music, specifically post metal. She also likes to dye her hair blue and used blue apocalypse as an internet alias for various things. She is an ABC aka Australian born Chinese residing in Perth, Western Australia. Her grandparents are from China but her parents were born and grew up in Vietnam.

Typically barbecue is either a cooking method or a cooking apparatus. The difference between barbecuing and grilling has to do with the cooking times and the types of heat used. Grilling is most often done quickly over moderate to high direct heat with little smoke, while barbecuing is done more slowly over low indirect heat and the food is flavored by the smoking process. There are different barbecue sauces and ways of doing depending where you are in the world.