It is mainly used for adding the color of the dish. So for most Chinese stir-fry recipe, if only soy sauce is called, use light soy sauce!ĭark soy sauce(老抽) is the common soy sauce with caramel. So it is commonly used in stir fry dishes, salad, noodle soups and dipping sauces. Light soy sauce(生抽) has a lighter color than dark soy sauce and it mainly used for adding the flavor. There are three types of soy sauce: light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and soy sauce pastes. They perform differently in dishes. It has a mildly salty flavor and bright red color after fermentation. Soy sauce is a traditional seasoning for Chinese recipe which is made from soy beans, wheat and wheat bran (麸皮). Soy sauce should be come firstly since it is the basic for many stir-fry sauces. It include introduction of various Chinese sauces, pastes, cooking wine, vinegars and oil. This is a post to guide you from the beginner to advanced Chinese cooking-using different types of sauces and paste for flavoring. Either you are familiar with Chinese cooking or not, the large ground of sauces used in Chinese recipes sometimes can be quite confusing. If you have white wine or sherry, those will work too.Recently I get the feedback from some of my readers that they are confused about the sauces and pastes mentioned in the recipes from this blog or other places introducing real Chinese recipes. I also didn’t have any rice wine so I used brandy instead. The combination of all of these ingredients worked really well to replace the Hoisin Sauce to the point where I didn’t even notice it was missing. To make up for the lack of Hoisin I added miso paste (also made of fermented soybeans and also replacing the red bean curd which I didn’t have), extra soy sauce (made of fermented soybeans too), extra honey, and extra Chinese 5 Spice. If you are unfamiliar with Hoisin Sauce it is a sweet fermented soybean sauce with a base of flavours similar to Chinese 5 Spice. I have yet to find a good quality gluten-free version of this so I left it out of the recipe. One of the main ingredients in Char Siu is typically Hoisin sauce.
Making the marinade is as easy as putting ingredients in a bowl and stirring them.
The secret to the incredible flavour of Char Siu is in the marinade which doubles as a basting liquid and even plays a thrid roll as a sauce later (once it has been boiled). The recipe I created is based on one I found online which seemed pretty good. To accommodate my issues with gluten and to use ingredients I already had on hand I changed the basic recipe a little bit, but we will get into that later. The main flavours of Char Siu are typically Chinese 5 spice, honey, soy sauce, rice wine, hoisin sauce, and red bean curd. It’s always best not to die your food with red food colouring if you can avoid it. As nice as the red colour is, if you can’t find red bean curd or Korean Chili powder, I recommend just leaving it. It’s also possible that the red bean curd was added to mimic that natural red line. It is likely that char siu was originally cooked slowly over an open fire leading to a red smoke ring around the meat. The colour of mine comes from Korean Chili Powder. The red colour of char siu generally comes from either red bean curd or red food colouring. And if you are looking for something different to do with a big chunk of pork, something that will keep you up at night with cravings, then this is it. The recipe I’m going to share with you today isn’t the recipe from all those years ago in the mall Chinese Food place, and I’d be hard-pressed to call it authentic. A sweet, and incredibly flavourful pork dish that to this day is one of my strongest memories from that period of my life.
It wouldn’t be until years later that I’d realize what I was serving that day and subsequently had for lunch every Thursday that summer was Char Siu, aka Chinese BBQ Pork. I asked what it was and the manager told me, “Chinese BBQ Pork”. There, in the tray where the daily special always went, was a pile of bright red pieces of pork. When I arrived at work the steam table was already set up and as my eyes scanned the all familiar pre-lunch mounds of fried rice, lo mein, sweet and sour pork, and beef and broccoli, something caught my eye. It was my first Thursday working and so it was also the first time I was seeing the Thursday special. Every day of the week there was a different special at the restaurant. It was the year 2000, I was 15 years old and working for the summer in a mall Chinese Food place in Southern Ontario.
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