Crispy Roasted Pork (ShaoRou)

It's been a porky week. With tonight's crispy roasted pork, Wey declared fatty pork makes him sick. He asked for a panadol, because whenever he gets queasy from eating fatty pork, he'd get a headache. He only told me tonight that he threw up after eating a lot of meicai kourou the other day. I am ecstatic! He's finally off fatty pork. "Not for long, mom," he tells me as he caught me writing this.

I've never made shaorou before but I've tasted home-made shaorou made by a friend. While it was very good, I wasn't totally impressed with the skin because it was hard crispy instead of light crispy, you know what I mean. I decided I'd experiment 2 ways: 1. my Dad's way, when he made meicai kourou, which is to boil the pork skin-side down in water for a couple of minutes (I boiled for 7 min), then prick the skin brutally with a fork. For Dad's meicai kourou, the boiled pork skin would be smeared with dark soy sauce and deep-fried until the skin is all bubbled and crispy 2. just roast it like my friend did, except I'd rub the skin with some vinegar, a tip I've heard of.

So I bought a medium slab of belly pork and boiled one side and left the other side alone.



This is the result:



Which side came up best?? I should've known. Can you imagine the amount of work if people had to stab and scar all the pork skin of the shaorou they make to sell?

The boiled portion (left side in the pics above and below, the middle left portion did not crisp) was crunchy-hard, it crackled so loud I could hear the crackling crackle in my brains as I gnawed on it. The unboiled portion (right side, all puffed up) was incredibly crispy and light - it is still crisp as I write this post, 6 hours later!


(The strip of shaorou in the middle corresponds diagonally to the slab at the back and you can see that the unboiled skin is puffier, while the boiled skin is thinner and unpuffed)

Crispy Roasted Pork (Shaorou)

1.7 kg slab of belly pork*, cleaned
2 1/2 T coarse salt
1/2 to 3/4 t 5-spice powder, depending on your liking
3 T natural white vinegar

optional: 2-3 pieces of nam yue (red fermented bean curd)

* choosing the perfect slab of belly pork is very important. It can't be too fatty or lean, and the skin must be of a desirable thickness.

1. Smear 1 T vinegar all over the skin, leave the slab of pork skin-side up an hour or two (or put in the middle section of your fridge overnight, uncovered, if you can wait) so the skin'll dry.

2. Switch oven on to 200 C. Take pork out, turn over and rub half the salt and all the 5-spice powder on meatside/underside evenly. Rub the nam yue on too if using. Turn over so skin-side is up. Rub 2 T vinegar all over the skin, then rub remaining salt over and place the pork on the wire rack of the oven. Put a tray under the rack to catch any drips and fill the tray with water so the drips won't smoke up your oven.

3. Bake without opening the oven for 1 1/4 hours (add 20 to 30 min longer if the pork is very thick; mine was not). Put the rack (use mitts!) higher up to grill the skin and increase the temp to 220 C for another 15 minutes.

When I sliced into the pork, I could hear the skin cr-cr-crunch! (doing a Zain here. Shan would know what I mean.) This is almost as good as the shaorou from our favorite shaorou guy at Merdeka Supermarket. Well, maybe I'm biased but I did say almost.

p.s. Wey has recovered. It's 11pm and he just ate a whole chunk of the shaoruo and said he rates it 10/10, with dark soy sauce, 9.5/10 without! I take his rating very seriously, because he has very sharp tastebuds and nose. Yay, sons are sweet sometimes!

Note: I've found out that crispy roasted pork should be well-roasted until the crackling is burnt. Just scrape off the burnt surface and there'll still be nice brown crackling underneath.