Roast Pork ( Char Siew)- st louis style

I bought some cheap pork butt last week because I remember seeing some recipes requested for that. After the pork butt was safely kept in the freezer for a week, I can't recall the exact recipe I wanted to try them on. So I ended up looking up recipe to use the pork butt insteads of the other way round.

There's a recipe from Gourmet, apparently an Asian recipe for roast pork. I decided to try that. We took some time to cut the 5 lbs pork butts into 2 inches chunk and divided them into 2 freezer bags. One bag was used for tonight's dinner. Since it required overnight marination, we pour in the sauce before we went to bed yesterday.

The roasting process was quite different from what I am accustomed to. A half inch of water was first added to the tray below the roasting pan without contact with the pork. Follow by a few rounds of basting with the marinate. This is especially challenging since there's hot water in the tray. Not to mention the hot weather we are experiencing now.

All in all, it's quite tasty, and definitely worth the effort. The overnight marination does ithe work to infuse enough flavor into the pork. I still have some leftover....I wonder what can I do with them...



Roast Pork (adapted from Gourmet Magazine)

1 (1-lb) solid piece boneless pork butt (shoulder), halved along the grain
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup Chinese rice wine or sake
1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut pork along the grain into long 1 1/2- to 2-inch-wide strips. Remove and discard any sinew but do not trim fat. Transfer pork to a large sealable plastic bag. Stir together remaining pork ingredients in a small bowl until combined well. Add to pork and turn to coat, then squeeze bag to eliminate as much air as possible and seal. Marinate pork, chilled, at least 4 hours but no longer than 24.

Put oven rack in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 375°F. Put 1/2 inch water in a 13- by 9-inch roasting pan and place a metal rack across top of pan (rack should not touch water).

Remove pork from marinade, reserving marinade, and arrange pork strips 1 inch apart on rack. Roast in oven 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring marinade to a boil in a 1-quart saucepan, then boil 1 minute (marinade may look curdled). Remove from heat.

Brush both sides of pork with some marinade and roast 10 minutes more. Generously brush both sides of pork with marinade again and roast, basting 2 or 3 times, 10 minutes more.

Increase oven temperature to 400°F and roast pork until strips are mahogany-colored and caramelized on edges, 10 to 15 minutes more (pork should roast for a total of about 50 minutes). Transfer to a cutting board and let stand, loosely covered with foil, 10 minutes.