Serves 4 people, best eaten with rice
Best for: Lunch, Dinner
Cookware needed:
- Oven bake tray with rack
- Food processor (optional)
Ingredients:
- 700g pork collar / pork shoulder butt (Cut into 2-3" thick, long strips)
- 1 tablespoon fermented black beans (豆豉), finely minced
- 3 medium sized eggs
- 5 shallots (finely chopped)
- 1 whole garlic (minced)
- 1 cup of rose wine
- 2/3 cups of maltose (warmed up, softened)
Marinade sauce:
- 3 tablespoons of light soy sauce
- 3.5 tablespoons of monk fruit sugar (if use regular sugar - make it 4 tablespoons)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup of rose wine (Add after 1 night of fermentation)
Method:
Remove outer skins of shallots and garlic. Put them and fermented black beans into a food processor until they turn into paste. (You can do this manually if you don't have a food processor)
Add the paste with marinade ingredients into a big bowl, mix well.
Whisk up eggs and mix the egg mixture into the marinade sauce. Cover bowl with cling film and put the marinade sauce in the fridge. Let ferment overnight in the fridge.
After fermentation, add 1 cup of rose wine into the marinade sauce.
Cut the pork collar into long strips that are 2-3 inches thick. Do not trim off excess fat.
Add the pork collar into a tray or ziplock bag with the marinade sauce. Massage the pork well for a good few minutes so the meat can absorb the sauce. Cover the tray with cling wrap, or if you are using a ziplock bag - squeeze out the air and zip the pork mixture up. Put the pork marinade mixture into fridge and marinade for another 3-4 days. Make sure you check on the pork, flip the pork in the marinade at least once a day.
When ready to cook, preheat oven to 230C (best if fan is on in the oven but it's fine if it doesn't have thsi function). Cover the tray with aluminum foil. Put a baking rack on top of the tray. Poke some holes on a baking paper and cover the tray with it. This step is optional but this prevents the pork from sticking onto the baking tray and burning.
You will need to bake the pork for at least 40 minutes. You will need to turn the pork and brush them with maltose every 20 minutes). Warm up maltose by putting maltose in a glass container and sit the container on top of warm water, this will make it easier to brush onto the pork.
After 40 minutes, lower oven to 160C and bake for another 10 minutes.
Take the pork out of the oven and let it cool down slightly.
Once cool enough to touch, cut the pork into 1 inch thick slices. (It needs to be a minimum of 1 inch! Thin slices will ruin this dish).
You can choose to serve the cha siu on a plate as a dish (with no garnish), or on a bed of rice with a fried sunny side up egg on top, garnished with green onions.
Note:
- Make sure pork collar is well marbled. The texture of the meat is better if the pork collar is evenly marbled or on the fattier side. You can opt for leaner meat but that will yield drier and tougher meat texture.
- Don't go overboard with the rose wine! It's tempting to do this but the rose aroma can easily overpower the entire dish if added too much.
- While some people may be tempted to garnish the cha siu with green onions for better visual effects, it's better to not garnish it with anything if you are serving the pork as a dish on its own. Any little garnish will alter the taste of the pork. This applies differently if you are serving the pork on a bed of rice with fried eggs, in that scenario, a little sprinkle of green onions will enhance the taste of the dish.
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