Honey-Roast Pork (Char Siu)

I am discovering that I like roasting meat: you can just leave it there to do its thing while you go about your business. Plus, it smells amazing while it cooks itself. This recipe makes enough pork for about 3 to four servings, but that really depends on how much you want to eat at a given time. If you have a big appetite, count on less leftovers.

I got this recipe from the blog Adora's Box. Check it out: you won't regret it!

My mother picked up my meat for me at the butcher while I was spending the weekend at my friend Patricia's house to help decorate her tree. As you can see, it cost 7.28$, which at first made me a little freaked out because it's a bit pricey. But my handy calculator tells me that if I do get 4 servings out of this it will only cost me 1.82$ each, which isn't that bad. All this goes to show you that I really don't know how much food - and meat in particular - costs.



Cutting my pork shoulder in half was another revelation because I wasn't sure whether the fat was on the outside or would go all the way through. As you can see, it's thickest toward the outer edge, but the meat is pretty well marbled throughout. It's fair to say that this is the fattiest cut of meat I've ever cooked with. It doesn't have as much cholesterol as, say, veal brains, but unless you want to eat chunks of delicious fat you're going to have to cut some of it away once it's cooked. I think next time I'll try this recipe with a pork tenderloin or something. But, as with all roasts, you don't want something too lean or it'll dry itself out, and that would be sad.

Making the marinade made me worried because it has so much sugar in it, and I'm not really used to cooking meat with sugar. I always forget that the meat doesn't actually absorb the marinade, so really it's not too bad when you think about it. The recipe didn' specify how to marinate it, so I stuck it in the fridge, since it makes me uncomfortable to leave meat sitting around at room temperature. I took it out while the oven heated up so it wouldn't go in too cold.

Brushing it with the honey once it was done was super fun: the honey just melted right into it! I wish I could do that step over and over, but I didn't want to over-honey it. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure such a thing is possible...

The pork was really easy to slice, and really delicious! I wish I could claim credit for this recipe, but I can't. Slightly salty, slightly sweet, perfectly cooked, so good you want to suck on the fat to get out all the flavor. Which of course I would never think of doing. *looks around shiftily*

I got the recipe for this pork from the blog Adora's Box. Check it out, get the recipe, and enjoy yourself making it!