Char Siu Pizza?!
This is me apologizing in advance to the entire Asian community which I imagine will see this as an abomination, an utter defilement of the peerfection that is Char Siu pork. But to be honest, I don’t really care because this pizza’s amazing. So thank you and #sorrynotsorry.
Dumplings were the original inspiration for this pizza. Traditionally a parcel of meat or vegetables wrapped in dough, I thought they’d lend themselves well to being pizzafied. One form in particular that I love, the bao bun, or baozi, is a steamed Chinese style dumpling that gave rise to the Char Siu baoI bun. The single greatest food stuff in existence.
Char Siu is a style of BBQ that usually involves slow roasting pork belly in a thick, sweet marinade of soy sauce, ketchup and other delights. It’s roasted until the pork is tender and beautiful caramelized, before being chopped up and mixed to make a sticky filling of diced pork, onion and garlic.
Usually, this pork filling would be used placed at the center of a round of dough, before being sealed and steamed to form Char Sui bao buns (the best thing you’ll ever taste). But since I am a Welsh chef making Italian food with Asian toppings, I had to change tact. Thus, the recipe you have before you was born, the Char Siu Pizza. Absolutely no difference in flavour profile, just the cooking methodology.
Of course, just as you would a bao bun, sliced cucumber spring onion finish this pizza, as refreshing reminders of this dish’s heritage. They cut through the sweetness and the fattiness of the pork, leaving nothing nut the unmistakable taste of Chinese cuisine. Try it, the Char Siu pizza.
To prepare the Char Siu pork
Prepare the sauce by combining all ingredients and warming them to release their flavour (microwave or stove)
If you don’t have any five spice on hand, just grind up these ingredients (or as many as you have on hand) in a pestle and mortar
Pour the sauce over the porc and let it marinade overnight in the fridge
Any contaier will do here so long as it holds the porc and keeps it mostly submerged in the marinade.
- Char Siu Sauce
- 600g of sliced porc belly OR 1kg whole porc belly (remove the rind if using whole belly pork as demonstarted here)
The following day, place the pork and its marinade in an roasting tray.
Again, make sure the sauce is deep enough in the dish to cover the pork at least up to half way
Roast at 160°C
The roaster time I’ve omitted here as it will vary depending on the weight and cut of your pork belly. Pre-cut Pork belly can take as little as an hour. Meanwhile, whole pork belly could go as long as 2-3 hours. The important thing is that the meat’s internal temperature reaches 75°C and that it’s tender enough to be shredded. One sign it’s ready for a whole joint of belly is when you can remove the bones with little to no resistance.
Keep adding water if the sauce level starts to fall too low (but make sure you leave some pork exposed as that crispy skin i incredible!)
Let the pork rest (10 mins for sliced belly, 20-30 for a whole joint)
Chop the meat fine in with the sauce, adding onion and garlic to the mix.
Finally an excuse to use that cleaver 😉
- cooked pork belly and Char Siu sauce
- 1 onion diced very fine
- 1 garlic clove diced very fine
You can now set the mixture aside (or refrigerate for later) whilst you set up the pizza station.
For the Char Siu Pizza
Open a dough ball on a floured surface
Spoon Char Siu pork over the stretched dough (add some tomato sauce to loosen the pork mix if necessary)
- Ladle of Char Siu pork
- Half a ladle of tomato sauce (optional if the pork mix gives you difficulty in spreading)
Spray the pork and dough surface with a little water (if a spray bottle’s available)
This’ll prevent the crust from browning too soon (we want to preserve that light, dumpling look) and it’ll also prevent the porc from burning before the pizza base is baked (the sauce’s sugar concentration means it does have a tendency to go from caramelized to burnt very quickly)
Bake on a baking stone on oven’s highest setting (4-10 munud)
Bake until pork begins to brown and crust is baked, but still quite light.
Finish with cucumber and spring onion.
- 8 pieces of cucumber, cut into batons with seeds removed
- handful of spring onion, sliced cross-wised into wheels.
Feedback / Updates
Here are a few things I noted after a week of serving the Char Siu pizza
- Reception was very good, better than expected (went though about 3 kg of whole pork belly).
- Tomato sauce as a base makes the pizza overly sweet once topped with the pork. Having said this, using tomato sauce to bulk up the sauce as it baked was fine. Perhaps replacing ketchup with tomato sauce would work, the sugar, ketchup and tomato sauce together are too sweet in their original proportions.
- Since the original sauce was so sweet, I’ve reduced the amount of sugar in this sauce to about 3/4 (60g instead of 80g). As stated, perhaps it would be OK at 80g if we used tomato sauce instead of Ketchup.
