Char Siu Pork

Char siu came to Hawaii with Cantonese contract laborers in the 1800s and never left — it's the red-edged meat inside manapua, the ribbon on top of saimin, the thing sliced cold out of the fridge at 10pm. In Guangdong it's hung on hooks in a vertical oven and blasted; the strips swing free, drip, and lacquer on all sides. A backyard pit is a different machine, so this is an honest adaptation, not a copy: 275°F indirect to render the fat and get smoke in, then a hot finish to build the crust the hanging oven gets for free.

The red is not paprika and it is not just dye. Nam yu — red fermented bean curd — is the traditional backbone, and it brings a funky, salty-sweet depth that hoisin alone can't fake. Buy the jar. Kiawe is a good partner here because the smoke is mild and faintly sweet; a heavy hickory would bulldoze the five-spice.

Ingredients

• 4 lbs boneless pork butt, cut with the grain into strips 2 inches thick — thin strips dry out before they lacquer
• 1/2 cup shoyu
• 1/2 cup honey, plus 1/4 cup held back for the glaze
• 1/3 cup hoisin sauce
• 2 Tbsp red fermented bean curd (nam yu), mashed smooth with 1 Tbsp of its brine
• 2 Tbsp Shaoxing wine (dry sherry works)
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 6 garlic cloves, grated
• 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp red food coloring — optional, purely cosmetic, and the old-school Hawaii bakeries all use it

Cook Sequence

1. Whisk everything but the reserved honey into a marinade. Pull 3/4 cup out and refrigerate it separately — that's your glaze base, and it never touches raw pork.
2. Bag the strips with the rest of the marinade, press the air out, and refrigerate 12-24 hours. Turn the bag once. Under 8 hours the nam yu never gets past the surface.
3. Fire the pit to 275°F indirect with 2-3 kiawe chunks on the coals. Pull the pork out of the marinade, let it drip 5 minutes, and lay the strips directly on the grate with an inch of air between them.
4. Smoke 2 to 2.5 hours until internal hits 155°F and the surface has gone from wet to tacky. Do not glaze before this point — sugar on cold meat just burns and slides off.
5. Simmer the reserved marinade with the extra 1/4 cup honey for 3 minutes until it coats a spoon. Brush the strips, flip, brush again.
6. Open the vents and drive the pit to 425°F. Glaze and turn every 3-4 minutes for about 15 minutes total, until the edges char black-red and the surface glosses. Pull at 160°F — the collagen in butt is forgiving, the glaze is not.
7. Rest 10 minutes, then slice 1/4 inch thick across the grain. Save the drips in the pan and pour them back over the sliced meat.

Round Out the Plate

• Hawaiian Mac Salad — the standard-issue cold counterweight
• Coconut Rice — soaks up the glaze drippings