Char Siu: Honey Five-Spice Roast Pork
Sticky, lacquered Chinese barbecue pork
Char siu is the glossy, mahogany-red roast pork that hangs in Cantonese shop windows, sweet and savoury at once. The twist here keeps the soul of it — a honey and five-spice glaze — while swapping fiddly skewers and a special oven for an ordinary roasting tray and grill. A tray of water below keeps the meat juicy, and a final brush of warmed honey gives that signature sticky lacquer and charred edges. Serve sliced over rice, in steamed buns, or chopped through noodles.
Char Siu: Honey Five-Spice Roast Pork
Ingredients
- 800g pork shoulder, cut into long strips about 5cm thick
- 3 tbsp honey
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
- 0.25 tsp red food colouring (optional)
Method
- Whisk together the hoisin, both soys, Shaoxing wine, sugar, five-spice, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, food colouring if using, and 2 tbsp of the honey.
- Pour over the pork strips in a dish, turn to coat, and marinate covered in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.
- Heat the oven to 200C fan and line a deep tray with foil; sit a wire rack on top and pour a cupful of water into the tray below.
- Lift the pork onto the rack, reserving the marinade, and roast for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, simmer the reserved marinade in a small pan for 3-4 minutes until slightly thickened.
- Turn the pork, brush generously with the simmered marinade, and roast for another 15 minutes.
- Warm the remaining 1 tbsp honey and brush over the pork, then grill or roast hot for 3-5 minutes until the edges char and lacquer.
- Rest for 10 minutes, then slice across the grain and spoon over any tray juices.
3 The Story
The name char siu translates roughly as “fork roast”, from the Cantonese practice of skewering strips of marinated pork on long forks and cooking them over or beside a fire. It belongs to a family of Cantonese roasted meats known as siu mei, the glistening rows of pork, duck and chicken that define a good barbecue-meat shop in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Chinatowns the world over.
Traditionally the cut of choice is pork shoulder or the fattier pork neck, prized because the marbling keeps the meat succulent through a fierce roast. Lean cuts such as loin dry out; the gentle threads of fat in shoulder baste the meat from within and caramelise at the edges. Cutting the meat into long strips rather than roasting a whole joint vastly increases the surface area that can take on glaze and char, which is the whole point.
That glaze is where the character lives. Hoisin and the soy sauces bring salt and umami, Shaoxing wine adds fragrance, and Chinese five-spice — typically star anise, fennel, cloves, cinnamon and Sichuan pepper or ginger — gives the warm, slightly liquorice-like backbone. Honey and sugar do the heavy lifting on sweetness and, crucially, on the lacquered finish: as the sugars heat they caramelise into the sticky, blistered crust that distinguishes char siu from a plain roast.
The striking red colour traditionally comes from fermented red bean curd or, in many modern recipes, a little red food colouring. It is cosmetic rather than essential, and the pork tastes just as good a natural ruddy brown if you leave it out.
Cooking it well at home comes down to managing heat and moisture. Authentic shops use upright charcoal or gas ovens that roast and char in one go. The domestic fix used here — a wire rack over a tray of water — lets the meat roast evenly while the steam below stops it drying, before a blast of high heat at the end delivers the caramelised edges. Slicing across the grain keeps each piece tender.
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