Chinese Barbecue Pork (Char Siu)

I am excited to introduce today’s dish – Chinese Barbecue Pork (also known as Char Siu). It’s beautiful char and shiny glaze on the surface will awaken your taste buds instantly. And I know you will be impressed by the bold flavor and tender texture. I will explain step by step how to make this wonderful dish. You’ll be surprised how easy it is. Let’s jump right in!

Pork shoulder is the most common choice to make char siu. It’s a fairly fatty cut from the pork (but less than pork belly). The fat in the pork shoulder and marinating process and will help the Char Siu develop a great flavor when is cooked.

First, I cut the entire pork shoulder piece into several big chunks (helps better absorbing flavor when marinating). Next, I marinate the pork with a combination of Lee Kum Kee Char Siu Chinese Barbecue Sauce, cooking wine, dark soy sauce, five spice powder, honey and grated ginger for 24 hours in the fridge.

Now that all the preparation work has been done, all we need is roasting the pork! After preheating the oven to 400 F (200 C), I first inserted a baking pan filled with water (3/4 full) onto the bottom level of the oven before placing the meats on a roasting rack on the middle level. The water to helps to generate moisture during roasting, so the pork will remain tender.

The picture below shows how the pork looks like after 20 minutes of roasting, doesn’t it look delicious? Next, I turn the pork over and brush more marinating sauce onto the pork and let it bake for another 20 minutes.

After roasting for 40 minutes (flip the pork and brush with more sauce after 20 minutes), the pork char siu will have a nice red color already. But we want to kick it up a notch and make it even more irresistible.

To create a nice char and shiny glaze on the surface, I used the secrete “weapon” of honey! Simply brush some honey onto the pork and let it roast for five minutes, then flip the pork and brush on with more honey before letting it bake for five more minutes.

Below is a picture of the final product. I don’t know about you, but my mouth is literally watering just by looking at the picture and can’t wait to taste a piece of the meat.

After slicing the pork char siu into bite-size pieces, I like to wrap them with raw lettuce to enjoy.

There are also many ways to use char siu for making other popular Cantonese dishes. You could cut them into dices and put inside a bun to make roast pork bun(叉烧包); slice them and place on top noodles to make roast pork noodles(叉烧面), or served with rice to make roast pork rice(叉烧饭).

As an example, I also made a delicious roast pork rice in less than 10 minutes by simply putting some char siu slices next to a bowl of white rice, adding lettuce and placing an fried egg on top.

Here is an overview of how I made this Chinese Barbecue Pork or Char Siu.

I hope you enjoy making this delicious Chinese barbecue pork at home. If you like this recipe, please leave a rating and share it with your friends!