HOMEMADE char siu buns

I would never have attempted making these when we lived in London as there are BILLIONS of places selling them, so it never seemed worth the effort to make such exotic things.

Doug LOVES them and keeps banging on about them, so I decided to give it a go. Plus I did feel that the yumminess of our pork was going to get things off to a good start, even if I didn’t do some other bits quite authentically.

I followed this recipe for the buns
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns/

• 300g all purpose flour + more for dusting
• 40g sugar
• 2 tsp. sugar tolerant instant yeast
• 80g warm water
• 90g milk
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil (corn oil or other oil without strong flavor)
• Salt

Put everything in kitchen aid and knead for 10 mins. Rest for 5 mins, knead for a further 2 mins.

Then leave to rise for an hour (or until doubled in size)
Divide in to 12 pieces, form each in to a ball (like shaping a loaf of bread) and roll out to 10cm diameter.
Put the filling in to the middle and shape the bun.
I watched a video linked from this page to see how to shape the buns
https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/06/carrot-ginger-pork-buns/

Once shaped allow to rise for 15 mins and then steam for 15 mins

The pork char siu I made using this sauce
https://www.souschef.co.uk/char-siu-marinade.html
There were no instructions. I used the whole jar for perhaps 1.5kg of meat. I cut the meat in to slabs about 3cm thick and put it in an oven proof dish, slapped the sauce on top and put it in the oven on 160°C for 3 hours until the sauce had gone gloopy (it started off gloopy then thinned out with the liquid coming out of the pork then dried out again)

It was quite saucy at the end of cooking, so I just cut the meat up and used it as was, rather than adding the things to the char siu pork in the recipe on the first link.

The pork

The pork chopped up

Twelve dough balls

Rolled out flat with the filling on it

The first one - needs some more practice shaping them

The last one - looking better

Raw

Cooked

The final delicious product. SOOOO delicious.

We had only these for dinner, so we were going to be hungry if they didn’t work out!
But they did and we were very full. Amazingly delicious.

I am going to try this soon also, we had it in Paris and I have had it in London too.
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/saliva-chicken/