Holiday Char Sui Pork

Ingredients:

Meat: 8-15 lbs boneless pork butt or shoulder.
Some people say you can use pork loin but that's not what is traditionally used and the loin doesn't have enough fat marbled in the meat. If you're going to go theough all this trouble you'll want to use the right meat.

Marinade: Garlic - 8 Chopped Cloves
Shallots - 4 Finely Chopped
Scallions (I couldn't find any so I skipped this) - 4
Chopped Honey - 0.25 cup
Dry Sherry - 2 tsp
Rice Wine - 2 tbsp
Red Dye #2 - 1 tsp
Soy Sauce - 0.5 cup
Sesame Oil - 1 tsp
Hoisin Sauce - 1 tsp
Brown Sugar - 0.5 cup
Powdered Ginger Root (or fresh ginger) - 1 tsp
Five Spice Powder - 1.5 tsp
Hot Pepper Flakes - 1 tsp Kosher Salt - 1 tsp

Condiments / Garnish:
Chinese Mustard - 1 bottle

Cookware:
Large Ziploc Bag to marinate the pork
S-hooks to hang pork
Shallow Drip Pan / Cooking Pan to catch drippings

Directions:
So you'll want to make the marinade 1st so it has time to cool down. Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan, except the chopped garlic and shallots, and heat it up until it bubbles. With 15 pounds of pork the amount of marinade I made was a little short so if you like a stronger marinade penetration and you have 15 lbs of meat like I had, you might want to increase the amount of marinade you make. I ended up making another batch of marinade to brush onto the pork as it cooked. So once it's all bubbly and sticky sweet, leave it to cool. Take you pork shoulder (or butt) and cut it into strips along the grain as best you can - it took me a little examination of the meat to get the cuts right but it's not an exact science. The slabs should be about 1.5 - 2 inches thick and the reason you want to cut along the grain is that once cooked the slabs would be cut once again against the grain. This breaks up the length of the meat fibers for more tender pork bites

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Take your pork slabs and place them into a large Ziploc bag. Pour in your cooled sauce and then your chopped garlic and shallots. Massage the meat through the bag to make sure the sauce penetrates the meat (some people suggest scoring or poking the meat to allow for better absorption, but I didn't do this). Put the bag in the refrigerator to marinate for up to 3 days. I usually like to flip the bag over every 6 hours to make sure the marinade is evenly distributed.



During the marinating time you can go to your local hardware store and buy some curtain hooks. These are basically to replace the meat hooks they use in Chinese restaurants, but if you have access to the real deal you should certainly use them! I just took the curtain hooks and used pliers to bend the needle point back and into a hook so that it makes the shape of an "S." Be careful not to lance your fingers as I did (a couple of times). Once you have a handful of hooks throw them in a pot of boiling water to sterilize them.



On the morning of your special feast, take your upper oven rack and place it as high as it can go (in my oven I stuck it above the highest mount where technically it's not supposed to go). Then place your bottom rack as low as it can go and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Now take your marinated pork slabs and hook them with your custom s-hooks (be sure to hook them near the middle of the slab if you oven isn't tall, this ensures that the meat won't swim in the drip pan too much). Place the drip pan on the bottom oven rack and start hanging your meat on the top rack with the hooks. Again the idea is to minimize the meat touching the bottom drip pan so that they can cook evenly into this nice crackling gloss of red.

I think a small batch of meat would take between 20-30 minutes to cook but since I had a good 15 lbs I cooked the slabs for 20 minutes then pulled the meat out and basted them with more marinade I made. After another 20 minutes I basted the pork again (and even rotated their positions on the rack). You're better off over-cooking pork a little - between the fatty content of the meat and the marinating it should stay moist, but you don't want the outer surface to burn. So for that amount of meat I cooked it for a good 50 minutes to an hour. When all is said and done, take your Char Sui Pork out of the oven and remove the hooks. When you're read to eat, cut a slab against grain of the meat and serve (you'll want to avoid prematurely cutting the meat, especially when it's still warm or you risk drying the meat out).



The beauty of Char Sui Pork is that you can freeze the left over slabs and/or use them in fried rice, chow mein, ramen, steamed buns, oh my gosh good lord!