Baked Cha Shao

I hardly buy or cook pork. But when I do, it's usually well marinated before cooking, be it stewing or baking. Another of our favourite will be tonkatsu, I'll always prepare a batch of these & freeze them. Besides ribs, the only part we eat is the tenderloin.

Frankly, I enjoy watching people indulge in their belly pork, especially samgyeopsal (grilled belly pork) in Korean restaurants. But still, I rather stick to my tenderloin.

Since the girls are on their long summer holiday break, I have more time to really bake & cook, yes baking still comes first !
The girls, especially JF, likes cha shao a lot. She'll always ask for cha shao to be on her kon lau mee on Sunday breakfast.

I got this baked cha shao recipe from a friend's house in Labuan. I remembered about 8 years ago when we stayed there while hubby had a RC car competiton, I was so bored so I went through all the books I could find in the house & copied recipe after recipe, manually.
This is from one of the Chinese book, not sure who's the author :

Ingredients :

600g Pork, cut into 1/2 " strips
3 Tbsp Honey

Marinate :

2 Tbsp Oyster
1 Tbsp Dark soya sauce
1 Tbsp Shao Tsin wine
1 Tbsp each Garlic, Shallot, Bean Sauce (minced)
1 Tsp each Sesame oil, ginger juice
3 Tbsp Sugar

Combine all marinate ingredients in a large bowl, add meat & mix well, cover bowl & leave to marinate overnight in the fridge.

Drain marinate, place meat on grilling rack, grill at 210C for 15 mins. Turn meat over & grill for another 7 mins. Remove meat & brush all over with honey, grill for another 5 mins till golden brown.

I usually cook the marinate till boiling & sieve it as sauce for the cha shao. Just serve it with plain rice & some steamed vege.



We couldn't finish the cha shao in one meal. So I chopped up the remaining, with an onion, 4 beaten eggs, one huge bunch of spring onion & cooked rice, we've got ourselves fried rice for dinner that night.