KAUKAU TIME!--"Kaukau" is a Hawaiian pidgin slang word meaning "food" or "to eat.": red

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Char Siu (Cantonese Sweet BBQ Roast Pork)

Well it's about time... After enjoying all the other food blogs on Char Siu I thought it was about time for my turn to share.

I have always loved char siu since I was a kid. We'd go to Honolulu's chinatown and buy vegetables, fish, and meat but the thing I looked forward too most was sampling a taste from one of the char siu vendor stalls. My grandpa would speak to the chinese man and ask for $5.00 worth of char siu. The vendor would then take the meat off of the meat hook hangers and weigh them on the scale carefully. My grandpa would then nod "yes" when the guy would ask, "you like chop?". While the meat was being chopped on the big round wooden cutting board, the vendor would offer a piece of char siu to me, my brother and my grandpa then wrapping the meat in pink butcher paper. The pink paper would always symbolize char siu or crispy skin roast pork to me and my siblings. Ahhh those were the wonder years. I learned to cook at 7 years of age cooking our daily steamed rice on the stovetop. At that time we didn't have a electric rice cooker. I learned the old fashion style measuring the rice with the lines on my finger to get the perfect rice water level.

My greatest influence in cooking was from my grandpa. He was known in the filipino community in the 1950's-1970's as a great cook of huge filipino weddings, baptisms, and birthday parties. Grandpa would take me with him to these parties and I would watch and help him prep and cook for the given occasion. Grandpa owned about 6 huge carbon steel woks and cooked on empty 50 gallon steel barrels cut in half. There was no propane tanks so it was the old fashion outdoor wood fires. He'd use the Hawaiian keawe wood tree logs which they say is actually mesquite wood. The heat for the woks had to be regulated by moving the keawe charcoal around. Either taking some out or adding in to the flame. Grandpa would stir-fry huge batches of meat, cook steamed rice, boil vegetables, deep fry and steam all simultaneously in the six woks. Now thinking back to that time it was actually an amazing feat to juggle cooking in all those woks. Today I have 3 of the surviving woks from Grandpa in storage. I have graduated to hi-pressure propane gas burners now. A very big difference in cooking times. My late Grandpa would have been thrilled to use gas. :)

The first time I made char siu was probably in the early 80's while I was learning to cook chinese from reading cookbooks and watching TV cooking shows. The first IBM PC had just come out and the internet was in its infancy with only the military, government, and major universities utilizing it. Also there was no such thing as the Food Network! I would go to our local regional public library and I would stay for hours reading about ethnic cuisine especially chinese. I watched lots of cooking shows with master chinese chefs like Martin Yan and Titus Chan. I also watched a lot of the late Jeff Smith of Frugal Gourmet fame. He was a pleasure to watch. Before graduating from high school I had the pleasure to meet Martin Yan at a cooking demo and book signing at Liberty House in the Ala Moana Shopping Center. I met master chef Larry Chu of San Francisco in another book signing and cooking demonstration at the centerstage also in Ala Moana Center.

My family thought I was going to become a chef. I thought so too but the computer bug bit me instead and my interests went toward electronics and automotive technology in high school. I have always wanted to own my own restaurant, to feed people and have them enjoy my creations. Well enough said for now. Here is my recipe for Cantonese Sweet BBQ Roast Pork or Char Siu. Other blog sites spell it Char Siew and to me it makes it feel more exotic and ono when looking at the beautiful shots by fellow food bloggers.

Here is my basic recipe for Char Siu.

Ingredients:

10 lbs of boneless pork shoulder butt

Marinade:

1 Tbsp Hawaiian salt or coarse sea/kosher salt
1/4 cup soy sauce
4 slices ginger, crushed, peeled and minced fine
1/4 cup warmed honey or maltose
1/4 cup white or brown sugar. Splenda may be used as a substitute.
2 cloves garlic, crushed, peeled and minced fine
1/4 cup Shaoxing wine or straight whiskey
2 Tbsp Chinese 5-spice powder
1/4 cup oyster flavor sauce
1 Tbsp paste red food coloring
1 Tbsp MSG optional

Instructions:

Cut pork lengthwise into 2 x 8 inch long strips.
Mix marinade well in large metal bowl.
Add pork to marinade and mix through. Use thongs or very clean hands.
Marinate for 8-12 hrs overnight in refrigerator, turning occasionally.
Preheat oven to 400° F. & place a roasting pan filled w/ 1/2 inch of water.
Place pork pieces flat on a wire rack set high in oven. You may even rig your own meat hooks from metal hangers to hang in your oven.
Roast 30 minutes. Turn over & brushed with warmed honey or maltose. Continue to roast 15 min. Turn & brush again with honey. Roast another 15 minutes. Meat should have nicely charred edges with strands of glistening honey oozing and dripping.

To serve, slice finely thin across the grain. Char siu strip slabs may be frozen for convenience with other great chinese dishes.

In my kitchen I have a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Grill and BBQ to make my char siu and other roast meats I love to make. The rotisserie is self-basting so just brushing the honey on the meat is easy while its turning. The meat is cooked faster and more evenly. My char siu took exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook with about 15 minutes to rest before slicing.

Maltose is the secret ingredient Chinese restaurants use instead of honey and plain sugar. I had a hard time finding maltose syrup but finally found it in chinatown. After finding it I didn't even buy it because I had already bought a huge bottle of honey from Sam's Club. Some char siu recipes call for hoisin or sweet bean sauce, I find it unnecessary since I already have enough sweeteners added. I sometimes substitute sugar or brown sugar with Splenda then add the honey for the nice sticky glaze. It works out fine and nobody knows the difference. I make a big batch of sauce and store them away in jelly jars in the fridge. The consistency of the sauce is exactly like Lum's Char-Siu Sauce. Hmmm... I could sell my own and make a bundle!! :D