Char Sui is a Cantonese style BBQ pork that you can find hanging at the windows of roast meats shops in Chinatown. In Hawaii, you will also find char sui vacuum packed in the refrigerated aisles of local supermarkets. I even found it at the Costco in Hawaii!
Char sui has a balance of sweet and savory with a hint of spices, and is typically served over rice or on top of egg noodle soup with blanched chinese greens. Red food coloring is often added to the marinade to give it that characteristic reddish hue, but I don't like to use food coloring in my easy no fuss homestyle char sui.
This char sui recipe, while not completely authentic, is super easy to remember and make. The marinade is basically a 1:1:1 of ketchup, soy sauce, and brown sugar mixed with some additional spices. Bake, then broil, slice and eat. That's it! Super simple. Just make sure you use pork butt where there's a bit of fat in meat; otherwise the char sui will be dry.
I've made this countless times over the years for potlucks, ski trips, and family diners, and people always ask for the recipe afterwards.
This recipe makes a lot, but the char sui is freezer friendly. Pictured above, I made 3 individual freezer meals with the leftover char sui for my father in law to enjoy later. I also made him a stew of napa cabbage with shiitake and konbu knots as the veggie side dish in the freezer friendly bento.
Yields 8 servings
Ingredient:
4 lbs pork butt
Marinade Ingredients:
- 1 c ketchup
- 1 c soy sauce
- 1 c brown sugar
- 1 T garlic powder
- 1 T dried chopped onions
- 2 t ginger powder
- ½ t Chinese 5 spice
- 1 t salt
Procedures:
- Cut pork butt into long strips, about 2.5 to 3 inches thick. (4 pounds cuts into about 5 strips) Place strips of pork into a ziplock bag.
- In a bowl, mix together the ingredients for the marinade. Pour marinade into ziplock bag of pork. Mix and allow to marinate overnight in the refrigerator. An hour before you are ready to bake, take the pork out of the fridge and leave at room temperature so that you are not baking the meat when it is still icy cold.
- Preheat oven to 325 F.
- Line a large baking tray with foil. Place the strips of pork in a single layer on the pan. Bake at 325 F for 15 min. Do NOT throw away the used marinade.
- While the pork is baking, take the marinade from the ziplock bag and pour into a pot and cook over medium heat until reduced by half.
- After 15 min of baking, take the tray of pork out. (Pork is not fully cooked at this point yet, but don't worry. It will continue to cook during the broiling stage. We don't want over cooked tough char sui here!) Switch oven to broil. Baste each pork strip with the concentrated cooked marinade. Broil for 5 to 8 min or until slightly charred. Turn each pork strip over and baste the other side. Broil for 5 to 8 min or until slightly charred.
- Allow pork to rest for 10 min. Then slice and serve with remaining concentrated cooked marinade.