There is nothing quite like biting into hot, golden-brown burnished buns filled with succulent, salty and mildly sweet chunks of Chinese barbecue pork. A perfect marriage of Western-influenced yeasty milk bread and traditional Cantonese roast pork, we seek out this inexpensive, hand-held meal whenever we visit a Chinatown -- whether in LA, Boston, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York or D.C. Imagine our delight when we first tried making these at home and they came out beautiful and totally delicious! Over the years, we have compared several dough recipes and developed a pork-zucchini version for a more balanced hand-held meal.
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| Our first batch of homemade Chinese bbq pork buns in 2018 |
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| It all starts with homemade char siu pork |
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| Char siu pork in milk bread buns |
Perhaps nothing is as emblematic of a perfect East-West fusion as the Chinese Bakery. Traditional Chinese homes did not have ovens, which utilize a great deal of fuel. As a result, people would go to the bakery to pick up roasted meats. Alongside the whole roasted ducks and chickens are the red-tinted slabs of Chinese barbecued pork, or char siu 叉燒, which literally means fork-roasted. The sauce permeates and roasts into the meat, leaving a finger-friendly, dry surface and tender, flavorful interior. Char siu can be enjoyed straight from the broiler or grill, and it forms the starting ingredient for a wide variety of delicious dishes. It is often enjoyed as a hand-held snack enveloped in a white, fluffy steamed bun -- a filling staple of push cart dim sum tea parlors called char siu bao 叉燒包.
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