Recipe - Char Siew (Chinese Barbeque Pork)

Mention char siew and foodies get excited. When the owners of Kay Lee Roast Meat Joint wanted to sell their recipes and premises for sale at S$3.5 million, it cooked up a lot of excitement. This led The Sunday Times to check out who can cook the best roast meat.

Published by the Sunday Times on 25 Mar 2012, the best all round roast meat went to Kim Heng HK Roasted Meat, at Blk 214 Serangoon Ave 4. The best char siew went to Yee Kee Specialist Roasted Duck, at Blk 148 Silat Ave.

Congrats to the winners.
If you like to make your own char siew, you may want to try this recipe.

The char siew goes very well with zuccini, tomato and crispy garlic.

A quick way to make crispy garlic:

Chop finely 10 cloves of garlic,
Put in a small bowl or cup and add oil to cover the garlic (about 2 tbs of oil)
Microwave on high for about 2 min and 30 sec until brown and crispy.

Caution: actual cooking time depends on capacity of microwave.
Start with 2 mins with increments of 10 secs until garlic turns brown and crispy.

Here is a picture of the crispy garlic

This video from AsianCookingmadeEasy shows how to make char siew.
Note the addition of water in the roasting pan which will keep the char siew tender and juicy.



Another way to make char siew pork using belly pork



This 4 minute video shows how Singapore Fatty Cheong made his char siew.
His marinade of sugar, salted soya bean paste, light soy, dark soy and oyster sauce looks good.
But it appears in this video he put the cooked char siew in the raw marinade. Typically, the char siew is given a final basting just before the cooking is complete to give it some gloss.