"Chashao" pork buns.

I made Chaoshao ("Chinese BBQ") pork buns. They're very tasty, and relatively easy. The instructions are written in a no nonsense manner, because cooking really should be no nonsense and easy.

Chaoshao Pork Recipe
Ingredients:
        • 5 lbs of pork loin
        • 2/3 cup hoisin sauce
        • 2/3 cup sugar
        • 4 tablespoon of gin
        • 4 tablespoon of oyster sauce
        • 2 teaspoon five-spice powder

Instructions:
Take the pork, and strip off excess fat and connective tissue. Since the pork loin runs along the top of the pig's rib cage, it is rather long and slender. Take a knife, and butcher the loin along the long and slender cut of meat. You'll then want to cut up the pork loin into long chunks, thereby increasing its surface area to mass ratio, which will facilitate better marination and cooking.

You'll want to cut it along the grain, because after cooking, you'll slice the pork up against the grain, which will result in more tender bites.

Then mix all the ingredients together, and marinate the pork for at least 5 hours.

Then put the pork in an oven safe vessel, brush it with the marinate, and bake it at 375°F, for approximately 50 minutes. You'll want to flip the pork every 15 minutes or so, and brush more of the marinate over it. Near the end, just pour the entire marinate onto the pork, and let it cook with the drippings.

After you remove the pork from the oven, it should be dark brown/red, let it cool, then begin to cut the strips against the grain, which will give you something that looks like this.

Place the slices of meat back in the dripping, it'll the meat will soak up the rich condensed goodness, the thin slices will be good to eat. I eat it on rice, noodles, and of course, in buns!



Bun Dough Recipe
Ingredients:
        • 1/2 tablespoon of yeast
        • 2 tablespoons of sugar
        • 2 teaspoon of vegetable oil
        • 1/3 cup of milk
        • 1/2 cup of water
        • 2 cups of flour

Instructions:
Combine water and milk, heat it until it is warm, then throw in the oil, sugar and yeast. Stir. Mix in the flour, knead & add more flour until the dough is elastic, but no longer sticky.

Let it rise for about an hour.

Then roll it out into a log, cut the log into 10 pieces. Each piece will be one bun.

To make the buns, just roll the piece of dough until it is roundish & flat (roughly 3m, which I think is about 1/10 of an inch). Then put your pork filling inside in the center, and proceed to wrap it up.

To wrap, simply bring two opposite ends of the dough together at the top, meeting at the center, and press them together. Repeat until the bun is closed (you'll probably need to repeat this only 3 times per bun). Then pick the bun up, and place the top (which you just closed) on your kneading platform (so that it is upside down), put your palm on top of the flat bottom, and roll the bun in your hands for a few times, until the top (now on the bottom) is fairly flat).

Bake the buns at 400°F for about 20 minutes. You can brush the top with eggwash after baking them for about 5 minutes, but I skipped the eggwash... because really? Who cares if it is shiny. You can also steam the buns until the dough is cooked.


The Result? Yummy goodness.