3-Ingredient Char Siu (Xá Xíu) BBQ Pork

Overview: Ingredients for Char Siu pork

While shopping for ingredients for my wonton soup, I decided that a homemade char siu pork was going to be more tasty with the soup than a store bought version. Where I live, char siu pork is normally readily available at your fingertips in a lot of asian grocery stores.  These days though, not many hot food items are sold in stores due to covid. So for convenience, the mix was a way to help save a little time so that I could focus on making the soup. So what is char siu? The literal translation from cantonese means “fork roast”. Traditionally, pork tenderloin is the choice of meat and grilled over fire or roasted in the oven (usually skewered or ‘forked’). Due to its high sugar content, indirect heat is the best method on the BBQ to prevent the meat from burning too quickly. You can find many recipes online with variations of ingredients that make up a char siu marinade, however, common ingredients are hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, honey, soy sauce, rice cooking wine, red food colour and the most important ingredient: five spice. Char siu can be purchased as packaged dry seasoning mix or pre-made in a jar. My go-to brands are NOH or Lee Kum Kee. Either one will boost your meat with a lot of flavour. The biggest challenge is time.  Allow the meat to season for at least 4 to 6 hours (overnight is best). Pork tenderloin is a lean cut and a traditional choice of meat for char siu. This does not mean it will end up tasting dry though as long as there is proper roast time and right oven temperature. Start by removing the silver skin from both tenderloins (if present), rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Place meat into a large bowl and sprinkle seasoning mix onto tenderloins. Add rice cooking wine and with food safe gloves on, combine marinade evenly with tenderloins. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. I like marinating my meat in plastic zipper bags for 2 reasons. One is that removing all of the air will ensure the marinade is coated evenly. Second is that it requires less clean up. Who doesn’t love that?! Refrigerate meat for 4 to 6 hours or overnight (for best results). You might be wondering, why is char siu red? The obvious answer is that the colour can stem from ingredients such as red fermented bean curd, annatto seeds, chilli or other red spices. Food colour is used simply for convenience (and sometimes in place of the aforementioned spices).  In most asian cultures, red is a prosperous or auspicious colour that represents luck, good fortune, happiness, beauty and vitality. In my opinion, it makes sense why red food colour is used to enhance the appearance of cooked meat. It’s appetizing to look at, brings joy to eat and not so different than seeing brown coloured meats once grilled. One is just more common than the other.