So these
sliders, we're going to be making are Char Siu style.
Now, Char Siu is like a barbecue sauce thing that you put
with certain cuts of pork in Chinese cooking.
Usually it's a very fatty cut like a pork shoulder.
We're not going to be using a fatty cut today.
We're going to be using pork tenderloin, pretty lean.
And we need to get our Char Siu sauce ready because these pork tenderloin’s
are going to marinate overnight to really get that intense flavor.
Now, one of the ingredients
here is going to be some red food coloring that's actually very traditional
when you're making a Char Siu sauce, it's like a barbecue sauce.
You don't have to use that,
but you will lose a little bit of that redness that you get in here.
So we're using it.
It's like an eighth of a teaspoon, approximately.
First up, we're starting with a quarter cup of granulated sugar.
One and a half teaspoons of kosher salt. A quarter teaspoon of white pepper.
This is just like ground black pepper, except it's white.
A half a teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice.
One tablespoon of minced garlic.
One tablespoon of soy sauce. One tablespoon of Shaoxing wine.
It's a rice wine. It's for cooking only.
Next up, one half teaspoon of sesame oil.
I'm just going to measure this right here.
One tablespoon of hoisin.
This is very thick.
So you just got to let it come out there.
And two tablespoons of molasses.
This is very thick.
I could eyeball this, but I really want to measure this for this recipe.
Why do I want to measure it exactly?
And be very careful of my measurements? Because I actually filmed
part of this video before and messed up because somewhere
along the line I added too much of a liquid ingredient.
I don't want to do that again.
So this is all me re
filming this, doing it from scratch because it just wasn't right.
And I don't like to show the wrong way to do things.
That was one tablespoon.
Let's get another one in there.
And now for
our food coloring. Again, we're just putting a little bit in here.
Not a lot.
And we mix.
A lot of very thick ingredients here.
So you got to kind of work them until they thin out.
But doesn't that look great?
That color?
That's the color you'll see.
And Char Sue, when you're getting that in a restaurant that nice, vibrant red,
make sure all of the dry ingredients have incorporated.
Now we need to reserve two tablespoons of this marinade
because we're going to use this mix with some honey at the end
to glaze our pork tenderloins when they're done.
So just a couple of tablespoons here. And this will go in the refrigerator.
All right, let's get our pork tenderloin out here and get it marinated
with this beautiful sauce.
So in this bowl here, I have about 3 pounds of pork tenderloin.
You can see that's the length of them.
We're just going to get our sauce in here, get it massaged
and get everybody coated. I'm going to put a lid on this.
And this will go in the refrigerator overnight.
And tomorrow when we're out at the grill, we're not going to be direct grilling it.
We're going to be basically roasting it at a higher heat,
somewhere around 400 degrees, maybe 425. Char Siu,
a lot of times, you'll be doing in an oven around 425
or even higher at different places that I've seen.
So this is going to be our version out on the grill.
Let's get our beautiful sauce
on here and just look at that red
color. Scrape everything out, get everything out of the bowl here,
all the goodness. And then just get in there,
get everybody massaged, everybody coated.
And if you want to, maybe in 6 hours or so,
move everybody around, make sure everybody's coated.
You could do this in a flat dish.
I just happened to have this bowl ready, and it works great.
It's got a lid and I need to cover it.
So I'm going to get the lid on this and I'll see you tomorrow out at the grill.
All right.
Our Char Siu pork has been marinating overnight
in that Char Siu barbecue sauce. The weber kettle is up to temp.
We're going for 400 degrees today.
If that moderates down a little bit to say 375, I'm fine with that.
Once we get our pork on, I'm going to put a temperature probe in. The finished
temp for the pork today is going to be about 145 degrees.
We'll probably pull it around 140, 142.
It should rise the rest of the way, but at about 100 degrees, we're
going to glaze it with some of that reserved marinade
that's been mixed with two tablespoons of honey
and a tablespoon or so of some hot water.
So let's go ahead and get our pork Char Siu on.
I also want
to add a couple pieces of cherry wood here.
Just for a little bit of smoke today.
These are very slender, so getting the temperature probe
in the right place isn't always easy,
but we'll make it work.
That's looking like a good placement. 39 degrees.
This is pretty much fresh out of the refrigerator.
It's been sitting out here for maybe 10 minutes.
So I think we got a good placement.
We're going to get our lid on.
And when we hit about that 100 degrees, we're going to glaze these.
All right. We just hit 100 degrees internal.
Let's glaze these.
Let's get a little more flavor on these here.
Yeah, we could turn them over to the other side.
But you know what? I'm not going to do that.
These moves so quickly,
pork tenderloin, by the time we turn them over they may be done.
All right. I got to get the lid back on and we will pull these
like I said, at 142 ish.
We are just about to hit 142 internal.
Let's check our pork tenderloin
and get them off of here.
Oh, look at those.
Let's get our temperature probe out.
I'm going to get these off of here.
They're going to go in a foil pan covered with foil and rest for about 15 minutes
before we make some slices and build our Char Siu
pork sliders.
All right.
Here is one of our pieces of pork tenderloin with that Char Siu treatment.
And as I think I mentioned early in the video, traditional Char
Siu is a fatty pork and pork tenderloin is not a fatty pork.
So I'm calling this pork Char Siu because well, it's got that barbecue sauce.
It's treating it the same way.
We're just not using a fatty pork.
Let's go ahead and slice in
so we can start building some of these Char Siu sliders
Let’s go right here.
Oh, looking good.
And this is about the thickness that I want right here.
And we're going to be making these on Hawaiian rolls, which are the perfect size
for the smaller sort of diameter of pork tenderloin.
I know we're going to have to take a little taste here of this end piece.
Let's see.
That lovely
flavor of Char Siu, which is really sort of highlighted
by that Chinese five spice that comes in there, just terrific.
Now if you’re using a fattier cut,
it cooks longer.
This only took about 25 minutes total.
And that allows you to develop that sort of really darker
red color on the outside. You get some caramelization.
So when you're using something
like a pork tenderloin, you're not going to get that.
But I saved some of the barbecue sauce, I reserved even a little bit more,
and we're going to brush that on once we build our sliders.
So let's go ahead and do that now.
I've got the bottom half of my Hawaiian rolls here and I did not toast them.
You can if you want.
But on these I really want that sort of pillowy, soft consistency
with the Char Siu pork tenderloin.
So we're going to just start building
our base here.
And I think we'll double up a bunch of stuff on here.
We're going to see it like this.
We'll do our best to make everybody fit.
We don't want to be stingy with the pork here.
Now, I want to brush a little bit of that barbecue sauce that I saved on here,
just a little bit on each one, just for some nice color
and flavor.
Remember, before we brush this on the pork out there, as I mentioned,
it was mixed with a couple tablespoons of honey. That really helps thicken it up,
get some beautiful color and flavor.
And to finish these off, I have some shredded carrots
that I've just tossed with a little bit of rice
wine vinegar, just a nice little pop of flavor on the top here.
And some crunch.
Kind of similar to what you do with maybe say
pulled pork sliders or something with coleslaw.
Let's go ahead and start topping these.
And there we have it.
Char Siu Pork Sliders.
I'm not even going to wait.
I'm going to dive in.
All right. I grabbed a couple little sliders here.
Let's see how we did.
That flavor is fantastic.
And the pork tenderloin, just whether you're using pork tenderloin
or pork loin, is so tender when you cook it to right at that 145 degree.
So it's not too overcooked.
Pulling at 142 got us probably right in that 145 range
and it shows. It is tender, juicy,
and it really helps highlight the flavor of this Char Siu.
The carrots are a nice addition for that crunch,
but honestly it is the Char Siu here.
It is that flavor. It works so well and just putting it on this
nice pillowy little Hawaiian roll, it's a perfect way to eat this.
I could probably eat all six of those that I made up, but I won't. Probably.