Our best char siu pork recipes include easy recipes for Chinese barbecue pork and the delicious dishes that you can make with it, from char siu omelettes such as the Cantonese egg foo young to Chinese special fried rice, Hokkien noodles with char siu, and even a char siu burger recipe with Asian slaw, crunchy cucumber and Sriracha mayo.
If you’re making char siu pork for Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year, we have loads of ideas for what you can do with char siu leftovers. If you haven’t made char siu pork or Chinese barbecue pork before, it’s sticky and sweet on the outside and juicy and tender within. While you might think it’s a difficult dish to make, char siu is one of the easiest and most versatile pork dishes you can cook.
While we can happily tuck into a plate of succulent slices of char siu with steamed rice and stir-fried leafy Asian greens, such as bok choy or morning glory, the dishes you can cook with leftover barbecue pork are also delicious, so make sure to cook more char siu than you need. And if you’re looking, we have loads of Chinese New Year food recipes here.
Before I share our char siu pork recipes, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve cooked our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon; buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; browsing our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers designed with Terence’s images; or buying something on Amazon, such as these classic cookbooks for serious cooks or gifts for Asian food lovers.
Now let me tell you more about our best char siu pork recipes.
Best Char Siu Pork Recipes for Chinese BBQ Pork, Omelettes, Fried Rice and Noodles
Our best char siu pork recipes starting with a recipe for making Chinese barbecue pork.
Char Siu Pork Recipe for Chinese Barbecue Pork
Topping our best char siu pork recipes is Terence’s recipe for the Chinese barbecue pork. It’s dead easy to make, sweet and sticky on the outside, tender and juicy within, and it is also very versatile.
You can eat it with steamed rice and stir-fried vegetables and use char siu leftovers in everything from fried rice and noodle soup to burgers and banh mi, recipes for which you’ll find below.
We’ve made pork buns and roast duck over the years and they’re time-consuming and technical. This char siu pork recipe, on the other hand, is super easy and fills your kitchen with amazing aromas.
If you see a char siu pork recipe that starts with using store-bought char siu sauce, move on. Commercial char siu sauces are generally way too sweet to make that shortcut worthwhile. For an extra 10 minutes of prep you can have a far superior homemade char siu sauce, fine-tuned to your own taste.
While Terence’s char siu pork recipe won’t have that bright red colour that comes from the food colouring that commercial char siu sauces have, you can add your own if you must make it look like it should be hanging in a Chinese barbecue shop window. For us, however, it’s all about the flavour.
Egg Foo Young Recipe for the Original Cantonese Style Crispy Omelette
Published as part of our Weekend Eggs series on recipes for quintessential breakfast eggs dishes around the world, which we launched with Grantourismo way back in 2010, this egg foo young recipe is another of our best char siu pork recipes.
Although it has to be said that egg foo young can be eaten at any time, for breakfast, lunch or dinner or snacks in between. Our recipe makes the Cantonese style egg foo young – or egg foo yung and egg fu yung in English; fu yong dan or fuyong dan in Cantonese.
Originating in Southern China’s Ching Dynasty in the 18th century, egg foo young is traditionally filled with char siu pork, spring onions and bean sprouts, although I have to confess that we’ve mostly been making it with savoury pork mince recently.
Don’t get us wrong, we adore Chinese barbecued pork, as is evident from this collection of char sui pork recipes. Pork is fantastic here in Cambodia and it’s affordable. But we always seem to have ground pork in the freezer – hence this compilation of ground pork recipes.
Egg Foo Young Recipe for the Original Cantonese Style Crispy Omelette Fu Yong Dan
Soft Scrambled Eggs Recipe with Chinese Barbecue Pork and Chives
This soft scrambled eggs recipe with Chinese barbecue pork and chives makes a fantastic, filling breakfast eggs dish that literally takes minutes to make, and it’s another of our best char siu pork recipes.
Using a combination of Eastern and Western techniques, the result is the softest silkiest scrambled eggs with Chinese barbecue pork and chives. It’s cooked to around the same ‘doneness’ as good French-style scrambled eggs with big curds, but these soft scrambled eggs have a much lighter texture.
This soft scrambled eggs recipe with chives and Chinese barbecue pork is based on a Cantonese technique where the whites and the yolks are separated. The whites are whisked briskly and once the egg whites are fluffy, the yolks are added and lightly mixed through.
Then this is where my technique for these soft scrambled eggs veers away from the Cantonese scrambled eggs. I do away with the additions of corn starch, sugar, Shaoxing wine, salt, and MSG, and I just add a generous dash of toasted sesame oil.
This egg mixture is tossed into a hot wok with foaming butter. You then need to wait for the centre of the eggs to cook and push the cooked egg mixture to one side, tilt the wok to let the still-liquid eggs cook, then repeat those steps until all the eggs are just cooked.
To this version of soft scrambled eggs, I add Chinese barbecue pork or char siu pork and some slices of scallions or spring onions, and then I top the finished creamy scrambled eggs with plenty of sliced garlic chives.
Soft Scrambled Eggs Recipe with Chinese Barbecue Pork and Chives
Char Siu Pork Omelette Recipe with Crunchy Sprouts, Chinese Celery Leaf and Sriracha
Our char siu pork omelette recipe makes a delicious meal from char siu pork leftovers wrapped in a fluffy omelette and garnished with crunchy bean sprouts, Chinese celery leaf, finely sliced red chillies, and Sriracha sauce.
It makes another wonderfully filling and flavourful Weekend Eggs dish – whether you want to enjoy it for breakfast, brunch or lunch is up to you – and it’s another of our best char siu pork recipes.
If you’ve made and enjoyed our Asian eggs recipes, such as this decadent crab omelette recipe, which is one of our most popular eggs recipes – then you’re going to love this char siu pork omelette.
Like many of the other recipes in this round-up, this char siu pork omelette recipe was created to use up leftover char siu pork, so if you don’t have some Chinese barbecued pork in the fridge, then you need make that first. If you’re up for a second cooking project, make some homemade Sriracha sauce too.
A tip: to achieve the correct shape for a perfect omelette, you need the right pan. For a four egg omelette like the omelette you’ll be making for this recipe, you need a 20cm (8-inch) omelette pan. These pans have steeper and taller sides than many all-purpose fry pans.
Char Siu Pork Omelette Recipe with Crunchy Sprouts, Chinese Celery Leaf and Sriracha
Chinese Special Fried Rice Recipe for a Fantastic Filling One Pot Wok Meal
This Chinese special fried rice recipe makes use of any leftover steamed rice you have in the fridge and the wonderful char siu pork you cooked. Fantastic and filling, it’s our go-to recipe when we’re looking for an easy one pot dish to make — which in this case is a wok.
There’s always leftover steamed rice in our refrigerator. Whenever we use the rice cooker we seem to make a batch that’s big enough for two meals, which is handy for whipping up this classic Chinese special fried rice.
The dish is sometimes called Yangzhou fried rice, because its provenance is the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province in China, which was one of the culinary hotbeds of Huaiyang cuisine.
The traditional version of this Chinese special fried rice dish includes cooked rice, char siu pork, shrimps, scallions, scrambled eggs, peas, and carrots. Sea cucumber and crab meat were other additions.
Some recipes use lap cheong (or lap chong) instead of char siu pork. While I enjoy lap cheong, Terence’s find the sweetness of the sausages a little too much. Here in Siem Reap, lap cheong is widely available, however, Siem Reap sausage is his preferred option. The local Cambodian fried rice is actually similar to this Chinese special fried rice.
Tip: Using the biggest wok you have is key to this. We use a 14 inch carbon steel wok for this dish. With a smaller wok we can’t get that separation of the rice grains.
Chinese Special Fried Rice Recipe, a Fantastic Filling One Pot Meal
Hokkien Noodles Recipe with Chinese Barbecue Pork or Char Siu Pork
This Hokkien noodles recipe with char siu pork or Chinese barbecue pork is an old favourite inspired by a dish from legendary Australian chef Neil Perry, and it’s another of our best char siu pork recipes. It’s hard to believe that Terence has been cooking this dish for two and a half decades.
Terence’s version is modified from the chef’s recipe in his first cookbook, Rockpool. The chef had a footnote that it could be made with roast duck instead of char siu pork, which is how Terence made it for many years, however, with pork in such abundance here in Cambodia, Terence uses char siu instead now.
We love that this Hokkien noodles with pork recipe is just so simple to make. Once you’ve made your char siu pork, the rest is a cinch. The ingredients are easy to find in any supermarket with a decent Asian section.
While the original recipe called for Chinese cabbage, we like to use bok choy. Fresh bean sprouts might be hard to come by in some places, but you can omit it if necessary, you’ll just lose that little fresh crunch.
Hokkien Noodles Recipe with Chinese Barbecue Pork or Char Siu Pork
Best Korean Instant Ramen Noodles with Char Siu Pork
When Terence and I are busy and working long hours, we’ll often jazz up some instant ramen noodles for a quick and easy meal. Instant ramen gets a bad rap as fast food for lazy people or poor students, but as I said in my post on my secret formula for upgrading instant ramen, discard the packets of seasoning and add fresh ingredients and condiments to elevate instant ramen.
While I love Nissin ramen noodles, Terence prefers the Korean instant ramen noodles called Nongshim Shin Ramyun, which are apparently the most popular Korean instant ramen noodles, and Nongshim’s Shin Black Noodle Soup.
Terence cooks the noodles for four minutes, having added about half the soup powder first, and having blanched any extras that need cooking before that, such as the Asian leafy green vegetables and bean sprouts.
He then adds slices of char siu pork, crisp Chinese greens, the blanched bean sprouts, a boiled egg, deep-fried shallots, and his heady homemade chilli oil. A dash of Sriracha will also get your taste buds tingling. We prefer the original Thai Sriracha sauces but the American-Vietnamese Rooster Sriracha brand will do the trick.
Best Korean Instant Ramen Noodles Recipe – How to Jazz Up Nongshim Shin Ramyun
Char Siu Pork Burger Recipe with Asian Slaw, Crunchy Cucumber and Sriracha Mayo
Our char siu pork burger recipe with Asian slaw is like the best bacon burger you’ve ever tried with an Asian twist and it’s easily another of our best char siu pork recipes.
Using skinless pork belly strips marinated in the classic Chinese char siu sauce, it’s a flavour-packed burger with a little kick from the Sriracha mayonnaise and a refreshing Asian-style slaw in every bite.
Instead of bacon rashers, Terence uses fresh skinless pork belly strips, which he marinates in Chinese char siu sauce and bakes in the oven, which is quick and easy. We make our Asian ‘slaw’ and Sriracha mayo, and the rest takes minutes.
As usual, Terence prefers to use homemade char siu marinade, but if you’re time-poor feel free to use a store bought char siu sauce. We find that baking the char siu gives us the latitude to quickly get a little char on the pork using the broiler (top element) of the oven. You could also quickly flash them on a griddle pan.
When it comes to the mayo, one of our favourite condiments, we use Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise or Hellmann’s creamy mayonnaise. Once again, we use our own homemade Sriracha.
Char Siu Pork Burger Recipe with Asian Slaw, Crunchy Cucumber and Sriracha Mayo
Banh Mi Recipe for How to Make Hoi An’s Best Vietnamese Sandwich
Sadly, we can’t always get good quality baguettes here, and couldn’t when we photographed this recipe, so expect to see a new image when we can. The baguette aside, the filling is incredibly delicious.
This Vietnamese banh mi recipe comes straight from the source, Bánh Mì Phuong in Hoi An, where for three months we watched this amazing Vietnamese sandwich or more correctly Vietnamese-style demi-baguette, get filled with porky delights and tart pickles several times a week.
We lived just around the corner from the best banh mi joints in town when it was in its old location on Hoang Dieu Street and made a habit of going out for breakfast daily – generally for cao lau noodles as one of the stories we were researching was on cao lau, and often to our favourite Hoi An noodle shop.
But unfortunately, because we were working, after all, most days lunch was simply a quick trip around the corner to this modest ‘sandwich shop’, for these fantastic filled baguettes.
Spreads of home-made mayonnaise and home-made pork liver pâté were followed by layers of Vietnamese sausage (chả Huế), thin slices of char siu pork belly, cucumber, pickled carrot and daikon, fresh coriander (cilantro to our American readers), spicy chilli sauce, sliced chillies, and thinly sliced tomatoes.
Terence’s banh mi recipe calls for thicker slices of char siu pork and skips the sausage, as we’re already using the pâté so we have quite enough protein for one sandwich.
Banh Mi Recipe – How to Make Hoi An’s Best Vietnamese Sandwich
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make any of our best char siu pork recipes as we’d love to hear how they turned out for you.
