Lisa’s Letters Home: Char Siu Pork
Oh, hello kitchen! I’ve missed you! It was only one week but I am so pleased that you’re back with your working ovens, a stove top, and running water. You’re still a work in progress but as long as I can make food in you, I’m willing to overlook the cracks (and dust, bare plaster walls, dangly wires, lack of floor tiles, and temporary counter in a jaunty shade of red and green. It’s like Christmas every day in my kitchen right now.)
If it was just Paul and I, we would have lived on takeaways and restaurants for the week. Feeding a family of five is expensive enough at home let alone elsewhere, so I wanted to avoid this if I could. Some lovely friends took pity on us and had us over for supper, which was fantastic. I also, in a rare moment of organization, managed to fill the freezer with meals we could reheat easily.
I made some of my old standbys like spaghetti sauce and chilli, but I also discovered that meat in some sort of marinade seemed to improve over time in the freezer. I bagged up a metric ton of flank steak (bless you, Costco) with some soy sauce, Worcester sauce, Dijon mustard, oil, red wine vinegar, and garlic. Defrost it in the fridge 1-2 days before you want to cook it, then sear over very high heat for just a couple of minutes on each side. If you can’t get flank, skirt or rump will work just as well. Cheap and easy, and leftovers a’ plenty.
Char siu pork is another great freezer standby meal, and again, it just involves chucking meat in a plastic bag with stuff. There is a bit of preparation for the sauce, but you only need one pot – no cutting, no grating, no zesting. For little effort, you get tender pork covered in a sticky, deep, slightly sweet sauce. You can add a bit of heat with some dried chilli flakes, too.
This isn’t to say that we didn’t resort to Domino’s and microwaved hot dogs, because hell yes, we did. But these few “proper” meals were bliss and a bit of normality amongst the building rubble.
I served this in slices with cauliflower “rice” and some stir fried bok choi/pak choi.
Ingredients
- (Serves 4-6)
- 1kg/2½ lbs pork filet/tenderloin or belly (skinless)
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 1/2 Tbsps vegetable oil
- For the sauce
- 1 1/2 Tbsps honey
- 1 1/2 Tbsps hoisin sauce
- 1 1/2 Tbsps soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp Chinese wine
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1/2 tsp five-spice powder
- 1/2 tsp sesame oil
Method
Add all ingredients for the sauce in a pan over medium heat.
Cook until it thickens and goes sticky. Let the sauce cool completely.
Add the sauce, vegetable oil, and chopped garlic to the pork and marinate it the fridge overnight or pop it into the freezer.
To cook, barbecue for about 6-8 minutes on each side or place under a grill/broiler for about the same amount of time.
Let the meat rest for 15 minutes or so before slicing.
This is also ridiculously good cold the next day. Like we ever have leftovers.
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We're Ceri and Laura, a couple of magazine-editors-turned-food-bloggers. Also, we're mothers obsessed with delicious, healthy, family food. We're constantly thinking of ways to make your time (and our own!) in the kitchen easier and more productive, but still nostalgic for the days when dinner was cereal eaten over the kitchen sink.
4 Comments
Tina C
September 21, 09:56Was totally “geared” to find this recipe, sounds amazing! Tried to pin it and wanted to let you know I couldn’t because it says the source is suspicious or it is a suspicious link. I know it’s not but thought you’d want to know. Printed it instead – can’t wait to try it.
Lisa Durbin
September 23, 15:35Thanks for letting us know, Tina – weird! Not sure why it won’t pin for you, I’m sorry. 🙁 I just tried and it worked fine for me. Sounds like it’s something to do with your browser and security settings. I’m using Chrome, so maybe try pinning with another browser if you have one installed. Let me know how it goes if you make the recipe!
Helen
September 23, 16:24wait! what?!! You aren’t going to tell me what your intriguing cauliflower rice and stir fired bok choi recipes are???
Lisa Durbin
September 23, 16:50Haha okay! Cauliflower rice is just raw cauliflower pulsed in a food processor until it’s the size of rice grains. For this dish, I fried it with a little oil, onion, celery, garlic, and red peppers for about 5 minutes, then added a bit of soy sauce at the end. Bok choi was just fried with a bit of oil, garlic, ginger for 2-3 minutes, then soy sauce at the end.