(upbeat country music)
- Have you ever been to a Chinese restaurant
and they give you that pork, it's all red and delicious
and you don't know what it is,
maybe it's a thermal clear sauce or something.
Anyway, I've got the pit barrel cooker out today
and I'm gonna try making some o' that.
We're just gonna see how it goes.
It's my first time ever doing it on the cooker,
we'll see what happens.
For our marinade and basting sauce,
I'm gonna need three tablespoons of maltose.
This stuff's kinda not easy to work with.
Take my spoon and I heat it up in some hot water,
then I just kinda scoop it out.
As you can see, there's no way to be
absolutely accurate with this stuff.
Then I'm gonna put in two tablespoons of light soy sauce,
just plain ol' regular soy sauce, nothing special.
Now I'm gonna add one teaspoon sesame oil,
and one tablespoon thick soy sauce,
and I'm sure you can figure out why they call it
thick soy sauce, 'cause it is thick.
Three tablespoons hoisin sauce.
Half tablespoon oyster sauce.
Three tablespoons of honey.
Between the maltose and this honey,
it will give a nice glazed to our char siu.
Two teaspoons of crushed garlic,
and two teaspoons of ginger, finely grated.
One teaspoon five spice powder,
one teaspoon white pepper.
To get the color I want, I'm gonna use
one teaspoon of red food coloring powder
and half teaspoon of orange.
It gives you that nice red color without lookin' funny.
Now we're gonna heat this up, give it a good mix,
and we're gonna let it simmer for about five minutes
and then let it cool.
Got four-and-a-half pounds of pork belly here.
I'm just gonna slice this into four strips.
Now one thing you'll notice I did not do,
I didn't take the skin off and I should have done that.
I think the skin kinda came out chewy.
Anyway, look at the layers of fat and pork on this.
I'm gonna put about half of this sauce/marinade
on the pork belly, and then we're gonna rub it in.
Then we're gonna cover this with plastic wrap
and let it marinate for a few hours,
overnight is best, but I didn't have that long.
So the pit barrel cooker is just about ready,
time to put my hooks in.
I'm go' take a knife, poke a hole through the skin
'cause that stuff is tough,
and I'm gonna put my hooks in just like that.
Then we're gonna hang our pork belly
in the pit barrel cooker, and by the way,
on the other side is some ribs,
and I'm go' put a link to the video
up here in the top corner.
We're gonna put the lid on
and let these things cook for about four hours.
That gives plenty of time for me and Abby
to play around in the yard.
After four hours, we're go' take these things out
so we can put some sauce on 'em.
That way they're nice and sticky.
While we're putting more sauce on, leave the lid on.
Now we're gonna brush on a layer of sauce.
And we're gonna get all the nooks and crannies,
all the sides, yeah.
And we're gonna put 'em back into the cooker
for about 45 minutes.
Now it's time to take the pork belly out of the cooker.
Look at all that smoke.
Now this is almost five hours into the cooker
and this thing's still going good.
Look at that, yeah.
Okay, so I let these rest for about 20 minutes.
Now first thing I wanna do is take that hook out.
See how sticky these things are.
Awesome, that's what I was trying for right there.
And that skin's pretty tough to cut through.
Just go ahead and cut that skin off.
I wish I'd have took it off before I cooked 'em,
then everything could have been really sticky and gooey.
Now all we got left is good pork right there,
let's cut this up.
Damn, look at that.
Okay, one thing left to know, how does it taste?
I want the piece with all this crust on it.
You know, I tasted the skin part.
Tastes okay but chewy and rubbery.
Nah, do it without the skin.
It's good.