Char Siu

I don't know why it took me so long to make this. Maybe it's one of those things again where I'm afraid it is too hard or takes a very long time. Honestly, it didn't and it was really good. So worth it!

I used the recipe from @madewithlau and tweaked it a little bit along the way.

Ingredients (4-6p):

• 1 kg pork shoulder (procureur) • 3 grated garlic cloves • 4 tbsp brown sugar • 2 tbap oyster sauce • 3 tbsp light soy sauce • 2 tbsp hoisin sauce • 2 tbsp red wine • 1 rbsp Shaoxing rice wine • 1 cube red fermented bean curd • 1 tsp Chinese 5-spice • a few drops red food colouring • 2 tbsp honey • 2 tbsp water •

1. Cut your pork shoulder into 2-3 cm thick slices. Poke the meat with a fork. Mix all the ingredients except for the water and honey. Put the meat in a zip lock bag together with the marinade. Marinade for 6-8 hours or overnight. Not longer than 24 hours.

2. An hour before cooking, take the meat out of the fridge and let it get to room temperature.

3. Take the meat out of the zip lock bag and put it onto a baking rack on top of a baking tray. Line the tray with aluminium foil, to make the cleaning easier. Put some water on the tray, to prevent the dripping sauce from burning. Pre-heat your oven at 220°C.

4. Grill the meat for 15 minutes. While this is happening, put the marinade in a pan and simmer to thicken if it got thin from the meat juices. After the first 15 minutes, brush the marinade on both sides of the meat and put back for another 15 minutes.

5. After the first 30 minutes, mix the honey with the water. Now brush this mixture on both sides of the meat and grill for 10 minutes.

6. Finally, crank up the heat to 240°C, brush both sides of the meat with the honey water again and put back for another 10 minutes (makes 50 minutes total).

After this, take put of the oven and rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

Serve over white rice and with an optional sauce (4 tbasp hoisin, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp water, ½ tbsp honey) and leftover marinade (only use the last one if you heated it to thicken).

Enjoy!