Pork Char Siu - Cantonese Style Roasted Pork

Ingredients:

Main marinade body
Hoi Sin Sauce - 3/8 cup
Honey - 1/6 cup
Soy Sauce - 1/4 cup
Sherry - 1/4 cup (or rice wine)
Sugar - 1 Tbsp

'Extra' ingredients to marinade
Red Food Coloring - 1 Tsp
Ginger - 1 Tsp * I used fresh grated ginger
Sesame Oil - 1 Tsp

The Rest
400g pork
200g rice
bag of beansprouts

The extra ingredients are those that are not totally 100% neccesary, but those I feel add to the deliciousness of the dish.

Step 1:

Dump them all into a pot, and it should look something like this:

Step 2:

Mix it up well so it's just a slightly thick reddish-brown sauce. It should look like this (minus the 'bits).

Step 3:

I don't know how you guys get your meat, but I get it sliced up into medallions. Basically you want 'squares' of meat about 1" thick and 5-6" long, if possible.

Step 4:

Stick it in a dish and pour in the marinade.

Note that there are no little bits of stuff in my sauce. The only Hoi Sin I could find on short notice was 'sauce in a jar' stuff with little bits of water chestnuts. - I just poured it through a sieve first to filter it all out and it comes out nice and clear.

You should really let this marinade for at least 6-8 hours, it is probably worth going overnight for the extra flavour.

Step 5:

Take them out and have a look - they should be nice and red. I know it's a bit of a cheat to use the food colouring but it looks fantastic and nobody's going to know anyway.

Step 6:

Heat the oven up to about 425'F (220'C). Here's a bit of a tricky park - get a grill rack and pan, and fill up the resevoir underneath with water to a bit underneath the rack itself and pop it in (no meat!).

Step 7:

Leave it for about 10 minutes and open it up -careful of the steam! - slap on your meat onto the rack. Turn down the oven to 325'F (170'C) and cook for 40 minutes.

Step 8:

You will want to flip them over then baste the meat every 10 minutes with a little of the marinade.

Step 9:

At T-minus 30 minutes, get your rice ready. 200g of rice to 300ml of water in a steamer. Set it for 25 minutes and you're good to go.

Step 10:

With 5 minutes to go, stop basting with marinade, and chuck a bit more honey onto the pork to glaze it. Also, get out your beanshoots. Pour a little sesame oil into a frying pan and chuck in a handful or two of the shoots.

After softening them up add some of the marinade and let it bubble away until you're serving up.

Step 11:

Remove your meat from the oven and check all is well. Slice the end off of one medallion and ensure it's both a: cooked and b: beautiful.

Step 12:

Slice it all up into 5mm wide strips.
Finally - get out your rice and arrange it in a nice bed around the plate, scoop out some of the beanshoots and sauce and plonk it into the middle. Divide up your meat and lay it out nicely.