Xa xiu: char siu, barbecued laqué pork
Author: 
Recipe type: Main
Cuisine: Chinese
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 6-8
 
Ingredients
  • 2 lbs pork butt (1 kg "échine de porc" if you're French, spare rib roast if you're British. Any piece of the pork with reasonable fat content will do. NOT the belly though, too much fat in there)
  • 3 tblsp soy sauce
  • 2 tblsp fermented bean paste (the salty kind. You can substitute hoisin sauce, but it won't taste quite the same)
  • 1 tblsp Shaoxing wine
  • 2 tblsp ketchup
  • 2 tblsp fruit juice (pref. orange or pineapple or something acidic, pref. without added sugar. I usually throw in our latest Tropicana purchase. This batch was made with pineapple, mango & lime juice)
  • 1 tblsp sugar
  • 1 tblsp. honey
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped up coarsely and crushed
  • ½ teasp 5-spice mix
Instructions
  1. Cut the pork butt into small bits--I do mine by eye, they're something like 15-20cm long, 5-7cm thick, and 5-7cm high? Doesn't matter much, you just don't want the meat to be too thin or too thick, and you want a decent length that you can later slice. Mix everything else into a marinade.
  2. Throw the pork in, and leave to marinate for 3-6 hours, either at room temp or in the fridge.
  3. Pre-heat oven to 270°C. Line the bottom of a dripping pan or similar dish with foil, and fill with water (this is to catch the drippings, and reflect heat). On an oven rack in the upper half of the oven, line up the cuts of pork and cook them for 20 minutes, putting the dripping pan just underneath (if you have a roasting rack and pan, you can just line the pan with foil and put the pork on the rack). By now, the pork should be cooked (check this before moving on to the next phase).
  4. After this, switch to medium broiling, and brush them with half the marinade, and let the pork caramelise for 10 minutes. Basically, you're waiting for the sugar in the sauce to caramelise: when it does, the pork will go from being vaguely brownish to a brighter, deeper colour tinged with red (it won't look as red as the picture, though, that's just the flash playing tricks).
  5. This is where you absolutely have to keep an eye on what's going on in your oven: the margin between caramelised and burnt is very thin, and you don't want to be on the wrong side... It's a fairly fast process (5-10 minutes).
  6. When the bits of meat start being done, turn them over, brush the exposed side with the rest of the marinade, and wait again for the caramelisation process to happen. Depending on your oven, you might have to do this in several passes. Feel free to remove the bits of meat that look done as they look done--in my oven (which is very small), the caramelisation doesn't happen at the same time for every chunk of meat, and I'd rather have the bits of meat a touch cold rather than charred black...
  7. Remove pork from oven, and cut into slices to serve.
  8. Serve with rice, sliced cucumber and dồ chua (pickled vegetables). It's also wonderful in sandwiches; or, if you feel courageous, you can do xá xíu buns.
Recipe by Aliette de Bodard at https://www.aliettedebodard.com/recipes/xa-xiu-char-siu-barbecued-laque-pork/