How To Make Asian Hoisin Marinade

Hoisin marinade is the base of char siu, and its defining problem is sugar. Hoisin is already sweet, honey makes it sweeter, and sugar burns long before pork shoulder is cooked through. Every technique on this page exists to manage that one fact. Get the heat and the glazing sequence right and you get lacquer; get them wrong and you get carbon.

Equipment

The marinade itself needs nothing more than the Large Capacity Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl with Scale and a whisk. The cooking is where equipment matters. A heat-resistant silicone basting brush is what lets you glaze in thin layers late in the cook, which is the whole technique, and a dual-probe thermometer with alarm keeps you from opening the oven every ten minutes. For a stir-fried version, the 12-inch carbon steel wok.

Ingredients

1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons honey, plus more for glazing
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine, or dry sherry
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder
1 tablespoon fermented red bean curd, optional but traditional for colour
1/2 teaspoon white pepper

Ingredient Selection

Hoisin brands vary enormously in sweetness and saltiness. Taste yours before you build the marinade and adjust the honey down if it is already very sweet. Shaoxing wine is worth buying, dry sherry is the accepted stand-in, and cooking wine sold with added salt is worth avoiding.

Five spice is potent and easy to overdo. One teaspoon in this volume is deliberate; two will flatten everything else into licorice. Fermented red bean curd is what gives restaurant char siu its colour and a savory depth that is hard to replace, and it keeps for months in the refrigerator once opened. White pepper rather than black is the correct choice here, it is earthier and less sharp.

Method

Mise en Place

Prep the aromatics: Mince the garlic finely and grate the ginger. Mash the red bean curd smooth with a fork if using.

Build the Marinade

Combine the thick ingredients: Whisk the hoisin, oyster sauce, honey, and bean curd together first until smooth. Adding the thin liquids to a lumpy base leaves you fighting lumps.
Thin it out: Whisk in the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and sesame oil.
Finish with aromatics: Stir in the garlic, ginger, five spice, and white pepper.

Divide

Reserve for glazing: Set aside 1/3 cup in a separate container before the meat goes in. Stir an extra tablespoon of honey into this portion. This is your glaze and it must never touch raw meat.

How to Marinate

Cut pork shoulder into long strips roughly two inches thick rather than leaving it whole. Char siu is cut this way for a reason, it maximizes the surface that gets glazed and lets a thick cut cook through in a reasonable time.

Pork shoulder or belly: 8 to 24 hours. Overnight is standard.
Pork tenderloin: 4 to 12 hours.
Chicken thighs or wings: 2 to 12 hours.
Duck breast: 4 to 8 hours.
Tofu or king oyster mushrooms: 1 to 4 hours.

Refrigerate throughout. There is very little acid here, so the risk of over-marinating is saltiness rather than texture damage, but 24 hours is still a sensible ceiling.

Serving and Application

Roast at 325°F on a wire rack over a foil-lined sheet pan with a little water in it, the water catches drips and stops them smoking. Cook to an internal 160°F for pork shoulder strips.

Glaze only in the last 15 minutes. Brush the reserved honey-enriched glaze on in two or three thin coats, returning the meat to the oven for 5 minutes between coats, then finish under the broiler for 2 to 3 minutes watching it constantly. Glazing early is the single most common way this dish fails, the sugar blackens long before the interior is done.

Rest 10 minutes, then slice across the grain. Serve with rice, or in noodle soup, or chopped into buns.

Popular Variations

Char siu with maltose: Replacing the honey glaze with maltose syrup gives the glossier, more traditional lacquer seen in Cantonese barbecue shops.
Grill version: Cooked over charcoal with indirect heat, closer to the original method than an oven.
Hoisin chicken wings: The same marinade on wings, roasted hot at 425°F, glazed at the end.

Make Ahead, Storage and Food Safety

The marinade keeps 2 weeks refrigerated in a sealed jar, and the reserved glaze the same. Marinated raw pork freezes well in the marinade for 3 months.

The used marinade is thick and looks exactly like the glaze, which makes mixing them up easy and dangerous. Label the reserved portion. If you want to use the marinade that held raw pork, University of Illinois Extension's requirement applies: a full rolling boil, stirring, before it goes anywhere near cooked food.

History

Char siu means "fork burn" or "fork roast," describing the original method of cooking seasoned pork on long forks over an open fire. It is a cornerstone of Cantonese siu mei, the roast meat tradition displayed in shop windows across southern China, Hong Kong, and Chinatowns worldwide. Hoisin sauce itself, despite the name meaning "seafood," contains none, and is a fermented soybean paste sweetened and spiced. The dish travelled widely with Cantonese migration and reappears adapted almost everywhere it landed, from Vietnamese thit nuong to the pork in American Chinese fried rice.

References

Related Guides

The Japanese soy-and-mirin glaze that solves a similar sugar problem differently is How To Make Teriyaki Sauce, and the Korean approach to sweet marinated beef is How To Make Korean Bulgogi Marinade. For where pork shoulder and belly sit on the animal, see How to Butcher a Pig.