� Char Siu (叉燒) - My dad's recipe for Chinese BBQ Pork!

What's up everyone?

Today my dad will be teaching us how to make

Char Siu, or Chinese barbecue pork

If you're new to Char Siu

it's an extremely juicy, sweet, and savory pork dish

And it's a popular entree on its own

And a pleasant addition to many different types of noodles

Rice dishes, and pastries like cha siu bao

For our gigantic Lunar New Year feast this year

My dad made char siu

because it has a few tie-ins to Chinese traditions and superstitions

Which you’ll learn about later on in the video

By my estimates, my dad has made char siu at least 10,000 times

Over his 50 years as a Chinese chef

So I’m really excited to document his recipe

To share it with you

And to pass it on to our kids one day

Happy New Year!

Be sure to stick around til the end

To celebrate Lunar New Year with us

And to learn about all of my dad’s secrets

Like how to get char siu perfectly red on the outside

And tender on the inside

And how some Chinese markets get away

With charging more for their char siu

I wanted to make a special shoutout

To thank our wonderful Patreon supporters for helping bring this video to life

If you're looking for a written version of this recipe

Check out our blog post at madewithlau.com

Where you'll find an adjustable list of ingredients

And step-by-step videos to guide you

As you make the recipe at home. Hope you guys enjoy!

Hello friends! I hope all of you are doing well!

Today I'll be sharing with everyone

Our family recipe for char siu

Char siu originally comes from Cantonese cuisine

And the word chā sīu 叉烧 literally means “fork roasted”

Which is a nod to the traditional cooking method

Of skewering seasoned pork with long forks

And placing them in an oven or over a fire

Although it’s considered a Chinese dish

Many other Asian cuisines have integrated char siu into their own dishes

Like char siew rice all across Southeast Asia

Or ramen in Japan

In ancient times, char siu used to be made with wild boar or other available meats

But nowadays it’s almost always made with a fatty cut of pork

What we've chosen is pork butt

We call it mùih táu in Chinese

mùih táu is pork butt

You buy it in large pieces, up to five or six pounds

Even six or seven pounds

When I buy it

It's all done

When you cut it, do long strips like this

Don't cut across the grain

Cut each strip about an inch thick

Just about there is fine

The whole strip will be about this big

We got a ton of questions about the best cuts of meat to use

From our Patreon community and Instagram followers

My dad uses pork butt

Also known as "Boston butt” or "pork shoulder”

And this seems to be among the most popular cuts for char siu

It’s ideal to use more fatty cuts

So some other options would be the pork neck end or pork belly

Before we marinate the meat

We first use a fork to poke it

When we marinate it, meat will absorb the flavor better

Poke it like this

Poke lots of holes close together

Then the meat will absorb it better

My dad is spending about 2 minutes poking the meat

We're done poking it

See?

The meat and its grain are long like this

There are layers of meat and fat

Remember

Cut with the grain, not across it

All right, we've prepared the pork

Next, we’ll start preparing our marinade for the pork

For 2 lb of meat

We'll add 1 tbsp garlic salt, 4 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp oyster sauce, 2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp hoisin sauce, 2 tbsp red wine

1 tbsp shaoxing wine, 1 cube fermented bean curd,

and 1 tsp five spice powder

Today, I'm specially using this red wine

Using red wine can bring out more of the red color

It won't be so dark

You can see this wine has some lemon in it

I put the lemon in there right after I bought the wine

Why's that?

I like the lemon taste

It's more fragrant when you use it to cook

That's the way our family does it

Also, I'm putting in a piece of fermented bean curd

It has a very particular fragrance

Also, the fermented bean curd's natural red color will boost the color of the meat

If you don't have fermented bean curd, it's not necessary

I'm putting in one piece of fermented bean curd

The last ingredient to highlight is our five spice powder

Or ńgh hēung fán 五香粉 in Cantonese

Which is an umbrella for the popular Chinese blends of spices

That usually consist of cinnamon, fennel seeds,

Star anise, cloves, and peppers

The number 5 doesn’t necessarily literally mean that it has 5 ingredients

As some blends use less spices

And some blends use way more than 5 ingredients

Five spice powder is actually a nod to the 5 traditional Chinese elements

Earth, fire, water, wood, and metal

And it's a balancing act of the 5 traditional flavors of Chinese cuisine

Salty, spicy, sour, sweet, and bitter

The marinade is finished now

Mash the fermented bean curd to mix it in

We're not using red food coloring here

If you want to use it, you can

If not, then don't put any

Our family doesn't use red food coloring

Do restaurants typically use red food coloring?

Yes, restaurants and other places use red food coloring

They want the red to be brighter

If it's at home, that's not necessary

We usually don't use it at home

If you’re committed to getting that vibrant red exterior

A lot of traditional recipes will use ingredients like

Red fermented bean curd or red yeast rice powder

An easy alternative is just to use red food coloring

Which doesn’t affect the taste

For almost all of our recipes,

We film everything twice just to have more camera angles

So for this one, we made a batch with half a teaspoon of red food coloring

And a batch without it

For comparison, you can see what both versions look like

After they’ve been cooked and chopped

They both taste the exact same

Which is to say, they are absolutely amazing

We're all ready now

Good, that's tasty!

The marinade is finished

Let's start marinating the meat

Place the meat into a ziploc bag

Pour the sauce in

And massage the pork for about 2 minutes

So that the sauce is able to finesse its way into the meat

Afterwards, we’ll push all the air out of the bag and seal it

Ideally, it'll go for at least 8 hours

Many people go overnight

It's best not to let it go past 24 hours

It's a hard limit of 24 hours

If you let it go past 24 hours, the meat will get hard

Understand?

Usually, 8 hours is enough for us

I think that 8 hours is sufficient

It's not a very big piece of meat

It's not quite an inch thick

Right? That's it

If you want it to go faster, press down on it

Massage the meat a little

Help it absorb faster

If you want to eat it the same night

Marinate it in the morning, don't refrigerate it, and just leave it out

Just like this

It won't go bad

Because it's covered in these juices, the meat won't spoil

Don't cook it straight from the refrigerator

After taking it out from the refrigerator, let it rest for an hour

Let the meat come to room temperature

Don't cook it cold from the refrigerator, understand?

You must rest it outside of the refrigerator

It needs to be at room temperature

That's all done

The meat is all marinated

Next, we'll prepare our pork for the oven

To make char siu, you'll need a few things

A baking pan, a baking rack

Tongs, and aluminum foil

This is optional, but you might also want to use a meat thermometer

That allows you to monitor the internal temperature of the pork as it’s cooking

My dad literally chuckled at me when I asked him about this and said

"We don’t cook this way"

But since I haven’t yet acquired my dad’s intuition in the kitchen

I like to use these to whenever I cook big pieces of meat

The last thing we’ll do before placing our tray in the oven

Is to add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of water to the pan

This helps to generate a bit of steam to help the pork stay moist

And it also helps to prevent the drippings from burning and smoking

Earlier, we started preheating our oven at 425° F or 218° C

Now, we’ll be placing the pork into the oven

Taking it out periodically

To lather it again with either our leftover pork marinade

Or 2 tablespoons of honey diluted with about 2 teaspoons of water

Here’s how my dad split up the cooking time

Cook for 15 minutes and lather both sides with the pork marinade

Cook for another 15 minutes and lather both sides with pork marinade again

Cook for 10 minutes and lather both sides with the diluted honey

And finally, we’ll turn the heat up to 450° F

Cook for another 5 minutes

Lather both sides with honey

And let it cool for a few minutes before cutting into it

In total, this was about 50 minutes in the oven

How do the restaurants do it differently?

Restaurants make larger amounts at a time

So they'll use a different method

They'll use a huge 5-gallon bucket of sauce at a time

Enough to use it many times over

So they'll use it differently

The restaurants won't use this combination of sugar, wine, and light soy sauce

They don't use as many ingredients as we do

Which kind tastes better?

I think that we use more ingredients, and better ingredients

How do you make the outside glossy?

Sugar

At the end, they'll use sugar, in syrup

They might not use honey

Restaurants use sugar syrup

At the end, they'll baste it over the surface

That makes it glossy

How do you make it moist?

That depends on the meat

If you use pork butt, what we call mùih táu

As long as you don't cook it for too long

It won't be dry

This is 2 pounds of meat

If it were one pound, would the time be shorter?

The timing is the same

It's the same whether it's one or two pieces of meat

You'd only be using less marinade

For a little more char, baste it with sugar

Then it'll be very glossy

Like the glossy ones you see outside

The restaurants drench it in sugar syrup

This way, they make the char siu heavier

Heavier?

Yes

They put the char siu in a basin of syrup and bathe it

They submerge it in syrup when they scoop it out, the syrup's hardened

It makes it heavier

And more expensive?

Earn more money!

If you take it out like this

That's business

They soak it in a basin of sugar syrup

It absorbs the sugar, and sugar is heavy

Understand?

If we baste it with sugar, it'll be very pretty

It will be glossy

It's honey cha siu

Look

Right?

See, isn't it glossy?

While it's hot, baste it with honey

Flip it over

Isn't it glossy?

I'm hungry

Hungry?

Let's take it out

That's it

Don't cut into it right away

Wait five minutes before cutting it

Let the juices rest first

It's still too hot

This one is ready

Let's cut it for everyone to see

See?

Isn't it nice?

Want a piece?

You eat

This is the nicest piece

Okay

So juicy

You eat one

Isn't it juicy inside?

It's full of juice

It's juicy and not dry, right?

Before we started Made With Lau

I started noticing this specific pattern

Of chicken, fish, and pork always showing up on the dinner table

As well as the prayer table when we bai sun during Chinese New Year

In our video on bak chit gai

My parents also alluded to “sāam sāang”

Which refers to an ancient Chinese practice

Involving a sacrifice of 3 animals to ancestral spirits

Around 3000 years ago during the Shang dynasty

Animals like cattle, sheep, and pigs were often sacrificed

Over time, the sacrifices became less literal

And society eventually gravitated towards

Honoring the “sāam sāang” tradition

Through cooking chicken, fish, and pig dishes

I also wanted to get my mom’s perspective, in general

On why it’s so important to celebrate Chinese New Year

With lots of food on the dinner table

Actually, in Chinese history

Chinese people, because it's a big country with a big population

The country is not rich, right?

Food production is not enough for the whole country of people

So if we have chicken, fish, and pork on the Chinese New Year table

That means expecting in the new year

That we'll have a lot of good food to eat

Chicken means "hóu sai gaai"

The family, economically, financially, expects to be good

Fish symbolizes yearly surplus

You never worry about shortage of anything in life

Pork is also one of the major foods we eat all the time

So pork also symbolizes that we have good food to eat

Is there a saying for pork?

It's just pork

You can make pork, you can make sau yuhk, cha siu

We have roast pork tonight

Siu yuhk is pork

After it's roasted, the pork is so crunchy

It tastes so good

So in the New Year, we have to have chicken, fish and pork

It just symbolizes that we have enough food for the coming year

This is a tradition that my family has followed for as long as I can remember

There are a lot of other traditions associated with Chinese New Year

So be sure to check out the full interview I did with my mom

On what Chinese New Year means to her

And the symbolism behind some of the most common traditions

For me personally, it’s really important to be able to document these traditions

So that when our kids grow up, they understand what they are

And why we do them

Hong Doi, you need to learn about the New Year, okay?

Okay, Hong Doi?

We give children red envelopes

Red envelopes

You want that one, huh?

What do you say?

Thank you

You're welcome

My favorite one

dō jeh, thank you

Tasty

Love you

Time to eat

Food to eat to celebrate the New Year, Hong Doi

The Lau family wishes all our friends

In the new year, good health, good luck

May you have good health and happiness with your family

It's like Lion King

Prosperity, success, and may you achieve all your goals

Cheers

Happy New Year!

Good health to you!

Laugh "ha" "ha" (shrimp)

How's the food?

We wish all our audience and friends

Have good dreams for the New Year, and that they all come true

And good luck in this Year of the Ox

One, two, three

Happy New Year!

Gong Hai Fat Choy! (Happy New Year!)