Char Siu - Cantonese BBQ Pork, in the Air Fryer! Easy Recipe, Testing Liquid Smoke

Hi everyone and welcome to my channel. Today I'm going to Guangdong in China for a classical Cantonese cuisine, char siu. For those of you who don't know it, char siu is barbecued pork that you can either eat on its own or you can often find it in stir-fried noodles, fried rice or even in bao buns. But the question is, is it possible to make nice juicy char siu at home, maybe in the air fryer? Well, let's try it out. It's actually a very easy dish to prepare, but you need to make sure that the meat marinates for at least six to eight hours, so I'm going to start the night before. Here I have a nice piece of pork shoulder, but I'm only going to use 300 grams, slicing it to about three centimeters of thickness. I'm also going to use 300 grams of pork belly. I'm going to prick the meat with a fork so it absorbs the marinade even better. Then I'm going to transfer it to a ziploc bag. Now to the marinade ingredients. One tablespoon of oyster sauce, one tablespoon of hoisin sauce, one tablespoon of ground bean sauce. If you can't find it, you can substitute it with an extra tablespoon of hoisin sauce. Then two tablespoons of soy sauce and two tablespoons of Shaoxing wine or any other rice wine. As I'm not going to use an outdoor barbecue grill, I'm also going to try this liquid smoke that I purchased online. It's obviously not at all necessary, but it's supposed to give a bit of that smoky flavor that you would normally get when you use a smoker or a charcoal grill. I'm also going to add three tablespoons of honey and one teaspoon of sugar. Now the traditional recipe calls for red yeast rice powder, which is used to give char siu its typical red color, but it isn't exactly something you find in every supermarket. So I'm going to replace it with one teaspoon of red coloring, but you can also entirely omit it. What you can't omit is Chinese five spice, one teaspoon, but that's something you can find in every supermarket. And lastly, one teaspoon of garlic powder, or you could mince a garlic clove. Now I'm going to mix all the ingredients well and then I'm going to pour the liquid into the bag. It's important to make sure that the marinade coats all the pieces of meat, so I'm going to give it a good massage. I'm going to try to let as much of the air out before I close it. Now I'm going to transfer the bag to the fridge so the meat marinates overnight. And here it is, 16 hours later, although you don't need that long, six or eight hours should be enough. I'm going to take the meat out of the bag without discarding the marinade and I'm going to transfer it onto an oven rack. So if you're using a conventional oven, you want to preheat it to 170 or 180 degrees Celsius, but I'm going to be using an air fryer so it won't be necessary. I'm going to set the air fryer to 160 degrees Celsius and 15 minutes. In the meantime, I've transferred the marinade liquid to a saucepan and I'm going to set it on medium heat in order to reduce it, adding one extra teaspoon of sugar. Now I'm going to take the meat out of the air fryer and I'm going to use the reduced marinade to carefully baste it on both sides. I'm going to make sure it's on the flipped side before I return it to the air fryer for another 10 minutes at the same temperature. That's going to be enough time to finish cooking some rice, blanch some broccoli and prepare a quick garlic sauce to go with them. What I need is 2 minced garlic cloves, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing wine, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. To thicken the sauce, I'm going to add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in water. And my char siu is ready, glistening and with such a mouth-watering smell. Once it's cooled down enough to handle it, I'm going to slice it. And here's the rice, the broccoli and the sauce. Perfect! Both cuts are tender and juicy, the pork belly in particular obviously, but also the pork shoulder. Using a pork cut with a good amount of fat makes all the difference. I made it with leaner cuts such as pork fillet before, the one you can see here, and I might be stating the obvious, but fat is what separates a good char siu from an awesome char siu. I think you should definitely try it, be it in the air fryer or in a conventional oven. And did the liquid smoke actually work? I would say it did add a bit of smokiness, but nothing to write home about. Or I guess I could have used a bit more of it, but I didn't want to overdo it. So are you going to try char siu? Let me know in the comments. For more Chinese dishes, you could check out my special fried rice and baozi videos. I'll add the links in the description. And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the button and subscribe. So where are we going next?