my first-ever char siu experiment

A lot of people use some form of char siu pork (read about char siu here) for their bánh mì sandwiches. I've put together my own bánh mì recipe based on several videos I watched and some recipes I found online. The plan is to serve a classic bánh mì and a bulgogi bánh mì at the same time. Many classic bánh mì feature Chinese-style char siu pork, and I found a video of a friendly Vietnamese woman whose pork was a "cheat" in that she used char siu seasonings from a package. So, more than a week ago, I ordered three packages of char siu seasoning for myself via Coupang. You can apply the seasoning to the meat like a barbecue rub, or you can add water to the char siu powder to make a marinade. Cuts of pork vary from pork belly to pork butt (i.e., shoulder); my grocery sells conveniently pre-sliced 400-gram packages of pork belly (a bit under a pound, maybe 14 ounces), so as an experiment, I bought some pork, made a marinade, then stacked the slices together inside my tiny bread pans as if I were baking a solid hunk of meat (which is how people like Joshua Weissman prepare their pork) and gave my marinated meat the oven treatment. The results turned out beautifully... if you're into that unnatural pinkish color. And here's a char siu recipe if you want to try making this at home.

pork belly, marinated overnight and ready for baking

stacking the slices inside the tiny loaf pans

The color is so radical that the camera is having trouble even registering it. Unreal.

closeup

Baked for 40 minutes at 180ºC (about 375ºF) with top and bottom burners on.

This looks amazing.

I can't get over how well this turned out.

The nice thing about marinating slices is the marinade's penetration into all of the meat.

It occurred to me that I should've stirred the hoisin-mayo-sriracha mix a bit more.

I ate my pork straight, and it tasted sweet and pleasantly strange thanks to the variety of spices and seasonings in the char siu mix (five-spice powder, etc.). I took some pork to work to share with my boss and coworker; they both seemed hesitant at first, but they both ended up liking the preparation (and no one threw anything away this time!). This is good because the pork is one of the two major proteins in the classic bánh mì: the other is liver pâté.  The above-pictured hoisin-mayo-sriracha sauce comes from Chef John's bánh mì video. The sauce goes well with the pork. I might use it on both the classic and the bulgogi versions of the sandwich, but the bulgogi version is also going to have a Korean glaze, and I'm not sure I want the sauce and the glaze competing with each other. Then again, they might actually harmonize. I'll be test-building some honest-to-goodness bánh mì this coming weekend to see how best to make each sandwich (especially the bulgogi one). Expect pics then.