Chinese BBQ Roast Pork (Char Siu)

I had a craving for some chinese bbq pork and chinatown was too far away so I decided to spend an afternoon trying to make chinese bbq pork. I called my parents for advice and you know parents, they don't give exact measurements so naturally I didn't really use exact measurements either.

Ingredients

Pork shoulder
Hoisin sauce
Five spice powder
Dark sauce soy
Chinese cooking wine
White pepper
 

Mix all of the ingredients (after pork shoulder) and use to marinate the meat.

Cut the pork shoulder into four sections and cut into eight long pieces.

The meat should marinate for 2-4 hours.

Once the meat has been marinated, roast pork in a roasting pan in a 400 degree oven. Every 20 minutes, take pork out and reapply sauce. Once the internal temperature of the pork reaches 160 degrees, change oven to broil and broil until outer skin is crispy.

Meatballs

This is a great recipe to have on hand. It is pretty quick and easy and you can always freeze half of the recipe to use for next time. I combed through many meatball recipes and the following recipe is what I decided to put together after reading through many meatball recipes.

Ingredients

1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
2 TBSP chopped flat leaf parsley
1/3 cup grated Romano cheese
1/3 cup bread crumbs
2 cloves garlic
1/2 onion, diced
1 egg
Dried italian spice mix

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

In a food processor, pulse onion, garlic, and parsley unless everything is finely diced.
In a large bowl, mix meat together with onion mix, bread crumbs, cheese, and egg and spices. Mix together. I found that mixing it all together with my hands works the best.

Form meatballs into balls and place on parchment paper covered cookie. Bake for 15 minutes. Afterwards you can use the meatballs any way you like! In this picture below I put them in BBQ sauce for superbowl meatballs. Also keep in mind that the meatballs will shrink during the cooking process so keep that in mind while shaping your meatballs.

Sorry I have a habit of forgetting to take pictures when I am cooking so here are the pictures that I did remember to take.

Texas Pulled Pork

I decided to try a different pulled pork recipe for the crock pot.  I found a recipe for Texas pulled pork and it turned out pretty well.

Here is what the recipes calls for :

1  (4-5 lb) pork shoulder
1 cup bbq sauce
1/2 cup apple cider
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 TBSP  prepared yellow mustard
1 TBSP worchestershire sauce
1 TBSP chili powder
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme

I threw in the chopped onion in the crock pot first.

 Put in the rest of the ingredients in the crock pot and stir it all together.

 I put the pork shoulder in with the fat layer face up.  It will easier to take the fat off after the pork cooks. 

 I let the pork cook for six hours on low and then turned it on high for the last two hours. After eight hours, I took the pork shoulder out and shredded the meat and discarded the fat from the pork.

There was a lot of liquid remaining in the crock pot.  After shredding the meat, I ladled all of the broth into a medium size pot and reduced the sauce.  Ten minutes later, the sauce reduced in size and was thicker.

 

I poured the rest of the sauce back into the crock pot with meat and kept it warm until it was time for dinner.

I paired the pulled pork with cole slaw and corn and it made for a great summer night dinner.