How to Make Chinese Barbecued Pork

We have here a four-pound pork butt, and we're going to cut it into very thin slices. Now, early on in our testing, we tried to cheat a little bit and make them a little thicker, but that doesn't work. You really need the thin slices so that the fat can melt. And how you cut it matters. I'm going to cut it right down the middle, but I'm going to trim away some of this extra fat after I've cut the slices, because it's a little easier that way. And so I'm going to turn it onto its cut side, and now I'm going to cut this into three sections. So you want a section that's an inch or less thick. These thinner steaks will really cook through evenly. A lot of that fat will render. And if there's any big pockets of fat, I'm just going to trim them out, and a boning knife really makes quick work of this, because it's a nice, thin, flexible blade. See how flexible that blade is? And that means you can really skim off the fat without getting too much of the meat. All right, so these look perfect. Yes, they do. All right, now I'm going to take a fork, and I'm going to prick them about 10 times or so on each side. This is just really going to help the marinade to get deep into the meat. So now the pork is ready to be marinated, and I'm going to use my favorite marinating tool here, a plastic bag. Very fancy. So we're going to get this ready for the marinade, and speaking of the marinade, we'll make that next. That sounds good. So here we have half a cup of sugar, and to that we're going to add half a cup of soy sauce. Now, a lot of traditional recipes we saw use both light and dark soy sauce, but we found that regular soy sauce worked just fine here. Next, we're going to add a quarter cup of dry sherry. Next, this is six tablespoons of hoisin sauce. That's a big flavor bomb right there. We're going to add two tablespoons of grated fresh ginger, a little bit of garlic, because garlic tastes good in everything. It sure does. This is two cloves of garlic, a little bit of sesame oil, one of my all-time favorite ingredients. Toasted sesame. Oh, it just makes everything taste good. That's a tablespoon. This is a teaspoon of Chinese five-spice. Last but not least, a little pepper, and this is a quarter teaspoon of white ground pepper, which has a much higher, more fragrant note than black ground pepper. So we're just going to whisk this together, and before I marry this with the pork, I'm going to reserve a half a cup of that marinade, because we're going to make a glaze to baste with the pork just before serving. And to make the glaze, it takes about five minutes on the stovetop. Now we're going to add a little honey. This is a third a cup of honey, which of course helps the glaze stick to the meat and adds its own flavor and sweetness. Last but not least, a quarter cup of ketchup. You know how I feel about ketchup. You love ketchup. I love ketchup. It's sweet, it's sour, it's salty, and it adds a really nice sort of fruity flavor to this. We're going to bring this to a simmer and let it cook on medium heat for about five minutes until it's nice and thickened, and it measures about a cup, and I'm leaving you in charge. Excellent. All right. Meanwhile, I'm going to take the rest of this marinade, and I'm going to pour it over all this pork in the bag. I'm going to make sure I get all of it out of the bowl. The reason why I love these bags is you can really press all the air out, which helps the marinade really get all around that pork. It also means that you don't have to use as much marinade. Yep. Now you have to let this marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to four hours. The longer you marinate it, the more flavor it gets, so I would always opt for the four hours. So we're going to put them in the refrigerator. All right, so the pork has been marinating for four hours, and now it's time to cook it. So you can see we have a rack set up here that's going to allow for even airflow on both sides of the meat, so you get more of that crispy char. I also went ahead and lined the pan with aluminum foil because that sticky glaze is a bear to clean up. If it burns on the bottom of the pan, you only do that once, and also I sprayed the rack really well with vegetable oil spray because that sticky sauce, when it gets into all the nooks and crannies of the rack, it's a mess. It's not coming out. Now, we messed around a lot with roasting temperatures. High temperatures were great because you got a nice char on the outside, but the meat was kind of tough. Low temperatures, the reverse happened. The meat was tender. It had time to render the fat, but you got no char on the top. So we're going to do a combination. Low to nice render the fat, and then we're going to finish under high with the glaze. All right. To help the steaming in the beginning to render some of the fat, I'm going to add a quarter cup of water. This also helps prevent any drippings from burning, and then I'm going to cover it with foil. We're going to roast it for about an hour at 300 degrees. Now, it's going to be covered with the foil for the first 20 minutes, then we're going to take the foil off and go for 40 minutes longer, and then we're going to broil it to finish. Oh, looking good. It is looking good. All right. If you could turn the broiler on for me, please. Sounds good. You see how they're nice and glistening on top? That's good flavor and good moisture, but all that moisture means the glaze wouldn't stick right now, and here we have our glaze that we reduced earlier. And we want that on the pork. That's right. We want it to stick. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to throw this back under the broiler for about seven minutes to dry out the tops of the meat, and then we're going to glaze it and broil it for a little longer, and we're going to do that on both sides. So dry glaze, flip, dry glaze. Dry glaze, flip, dry glaze. Got it. You got it. So that broiler is preheated, and it's time to get going. Get that for you. Oh, that's looking good. Those are nice and golden on the top, a little charring on the edge. And as you said, it's a little dried out on the top, which is what you want. Yes, exactly. So now it's time to glaze. I'm going to use about half of this glaze that we made and put it on the top and the sides. Hello, pork. This now goes back under the broiler for about five minutes or so until that glaze is nice and caramelized. Oh, wow. Oh, hello. Gorgeous. I mean, look at it. It's just still bubbling on the top. We broiled it and glazed it on both sides so that on the top and the bottom, it looks this gorgeous. Gorgeous. Right. But all this bubbling means it's very hot. So we've got to let them cool down and rest for at least 10 minutes before we slice them. All right. So this has rested for at least 10 minutes. At least. Mm-hmm. Felt a lot longer than that. I know. Now I'm going to slice it into nice, thin bits. Oh, and it's so juicy again because it's pork shoulder, which just retains its juice so nicely. Oh, look how juicy that is. Let me give you some choice pieces right from the middle here. You know what? I'm going to give you the end piece because that's the super glazy bit. I give myself the other end part. Of course, we're serving this over sticky white rice because that's traditional. Yep. It's also the perfect foil for all those big flavors. Mm-hmm. And all those pork juices baste the rice. The rice at the end is pretty good. I'm going to go right in for that end piece because it doesn't get much better than that. It's almost like bacon, but with a totally different flavor profile. And that flavor profile is awesome. This is a keeper. It is a keeper. You're a keeper. Thanks. For a foolproof cha siu at home, cut pork butt into strips and marinate the meat in a sweet and salty mixture. Cook the pork on a rack over water, then boil and glaze to build a crust. Cut into thin strips and serve with rice. So from our test kitchen to your kitchen, a Chinatown-worthy Chinese barbecued pork. Mm, most excellent. Thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen. What'd you think? Well, leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make, or you can just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel. See you later. I'll see you later.