keiraku's char siu

The other day on tv, there was a chinese restaurant that shared their char siu recipe.

I'm always interested in finding new recipes that taste like "home". This char siu recipe comes really close.

Keiraku's Char Siu

200 grams pork belly block
1 tablespoon shoyu (soy sauce)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon sake (rice wine)
1/2 teaspoon 5 spice (powder)

Put everything in a ziploc bag and marinate overnight.

Bake at 180C (350F) for 15 minutes. Flip and bake for another 15 minutes.

NOTES: The original recipe doesn't say to put everything into a ziploc bag, but it was the easiest way to marinate something and massage/flip it every time I opened the refrig.

After baking it for 30 minutes, the clear pork fat that was in the oven was actually glisteningly beautiful!

I let the meat rest for 5 minutes and I sliced it. It wasn't cooked, so I sliced everything and put it back into the oven for another 5 minutes.

Tastewise, it is close to the Cantonese style char siu that I grew up with. I like that it doesn't use all that red food coloring that we see in Hawaii.

I'm freezing most of this and will use it in fried rice. I'm making this again.

char siu don

The char siu don (donburi = bowl) from Foodland...$5.99

Just rice and char siu (a little green onions)

The meat wasn't fatty so it was rather dry.

But I was surprised at how much char siu they gave, totally worth the price.

I got lucky because there were some Chinese roast pork pieces in there too...whoo!

manapua

It's been awhile since I've baked bread, but the weather has been quite summery during the daytime, and I had some time on my hands yesterday, so I finally got around to trying my hand at manapua or char siu bao.

Manapua is a food I had growing up and I really like the baked version.

I used the same bread recipe that I use for anpan.

For the filling, I used some char siu, lup cheong (which I took out of the freezer) and green onion.

While you are waiting for the dough to proof, render the fat out of both the lup cheong and char siu separately, drain on a paper towel.

Chop the lup cheong and char siu separately into a dice and let cool.

Mix each with thinly sliced green onion and put into your dough before the 2nd proofing (at step 10 on the anpan recipe).

I baked these for about 18 minutes.

NOTES: The yeast was past the expiry date and I think I should have kneaded it longer. The dough was a little too wet to handle even if I added flour when I worked with it.

Next time, I would add a little more filling too.

Flavor-wise it was good and still had a nice crumb. I would make this again (with newer yeast this time).

cha han

In Japanese, fried rice is called cha han.

They use bits of savory char siu, shrimp, egg, and other goodies. And while this version is delicious, you just can't beat the version we have in Hawaii.

Hawaii's fried rice uses the sweet, red char siu, egg and veggies.

Sometimes you can find fried rice in Hawaii with bits of portuguese sausage or lup cheong (a type of chinese sausage) too.

(My friend on Flickr also told me that she can get these NOH packets in France! which pleasantly surprised me.)

For my fried rice, I sauteed some diced onion and diced carrot in a little oil and then added the diced up char siu.

Then I added the cold rice and broke it up in the pan.

Then I added a scrambled egg and mixed it letting the liquid evaporate.

Add a handful of chopped green onion and a couple of grinds of pepper.

Since I was having this for dinner, I added an over easy egg.

It was a nice way to use up the char siu I had made.

char siu

It was my first time using the NOH char siu packet.

In Hawaii, our char siu is sweet and red.

I find that the red foods turn off a lot of people in Japan, not sure why though.

Japan's char siu is grey-ish brown and savory, but the red, sweet version is what I grew up on and love it.

The packet says to add water, but according to my mom (and she knows best), she says not to add the water, just dump the contents of the packet and marinade what you want...pork, chicken, both.

Since I only had one packet and needed to bake it on my oven's turntable, I did some pork spareribs and chicken drumettes.

The packet says to marinate for at least 4 hours but I let it marinate overnight.

The following morning, I baked them off following the directions on the packet and in about 40 minutes...voila!

My blog friend, Kim, tweeted that her dad often makes this sweet type of char siu, slices it thin and puts it in banh mi...so you know what I had for lunch yesterday??

> Banh Mi! minus the cilantro because I couldn't find some at the store.

(I actually found some at another store after lunch but wasn't willing to pay almost $2 for 1 stalk of cilantro!)

Since I had cooked bone-in pork spareribs, I took the meat off the bones and sliced them up for the sandwich.

I knew this was sandwich meant to happen because I had daikon and carrot in my refrig.

While the char siu baked, I whizzed some in my food processor and threw together the pickled veggies.

Then while the pickles soaked, I shopped for the baguette and cucumber for the sandwich.

Even without the cilantro, this sandwich was awesome, sweet sour and a little salty.

Then for dinner, I took some char siu chicken off the bone and shredded it for chinese chicken salad.

I also used okara chips because the taste resembles wonton chips.

Even though the weather is icy and cold, there was lots of comfort food and sunshine in my kitchen today.

NOTES: next time use boneless pork belly and boneless chicken, also buy more packets.