Char Siu (Cantonese BBQ Pork)

Char siu is Cantonese barbecue pork — the glossy, red-edged, sweet-and-savory roast you see hanging in Chinatown windows and diced into fried rice, bao and noodle bowls. Sticky, lacquered, with charred caramelized edges, it’s one of the great uses of a pork shoulder. → photo 1

The name tells you how it was made: char siu (叉燒) means ‘fork roast’ — meat forked onto skewers and roasted over fire.

Ingredients

• 2 lb pork shoulder/collar (梅頭), cut into long thick strips
• Marinade / glaze
• 3 Tbsp hoisin, 2 Tbsp soy sauce, 2 Tbsp sugar, 1 Tbsp honey (plus more for glazing),
• 1 Tbsp Shaoxing wine, 1 Tbsp oyster sauce, 1 cube red fermented bean curd (南乳) or 1 tsp red yeast rice for color (optional), 1 tsp five-spice, 2 cloves garlic
• Maltose or honey, warmed, for the final lacquer

Directions

Key ingredients

Soy Sauce

Honey

1. Marinate — long is better:
2. Mix the marinade, coat the pork strips, and refrigerate at least a few hours, ideally overnight. Fatty pork collar is the traditional cut because a little marbling keeps it juicy and gives you those chewy caramelized edges.
3. Roast hot, turning and basting:
4. Roast on a rack at high heat, turning and basting with the marinade, until cooked through and starting to char at the edges — those slightly burnt tips are the prized part, not a mistake.
5. The lacquer:
6. In the last few minutes, brush with warmed maltose or honey (thinned with a little marinade) and blast under the broiler to set a glossy, sticky glaze. Rest, then slice across the grain. → photo 2

Notes

Where this came from Standard char siu method; pairs with the Char Siu Bao recipe here.

Not a 3,000-year-old dish You’ll read that char siu is an ancient Zhou-dynasty dish. That’s overstated folklore. Char siu as we know it is a Cantonese refinement of the 19th-20th centuries, standardized in roughly the 1950s — including the now-‘ideal’ fatty collar cut (梅頭), which only became the standard around then.

The red color — traditionally NOT dye That signature red rim traditionally comes from red yeast rice and red fermented bean curd (南乳), not food coloring — the bright artificial-red versions are a modern shortcut. A char siu made with no colorant at all is still completely authentic; it just comes out browner. Don’t let the neon-red convince you it’s more ‘real.’

The sweetness and shine The heavy honey/maltose lacquer and extra sugar are partly a ‘honeyed char siu’ (蜜汁叉燒) marketing evolution — maltose gives that deep glossy lacquer. A more restrained, less sweet char siu is equally traditional.

Sourcing Pork collar/shoulder with some fat beats lean loin. Red fermented bean curd and maltose are at Chinese groceries; honey is a fine substitute for the lacquer.