Char Siu Pork with Chilli Honey Dressing

This is quite a slow dish and best prepared way in advance. What I like to do is prepare the meat, let it marinade, then freeze this. It'll always be ready for action! Either way this Char Siu Pork has such a fantastic deep flavour. Often this is done with a big loin of pork, but instead I've used more available sausages. JUST pork. This let's me cook this a lot quicker.

Ingredients:
400g Pork Sausages
60ml Hoisin Sauce
2 cloves of garlic
A large knob of ginger (about the size of your thumb)
Star Anise
20g Sugar (4 teaspoons)

Dressing:
1 Red Chilli
60ml Honey
60ml Groundnut Oil

Remember my tip about garlic, peel this, then halve, allowing it to lose the overpowering smell from it. Finely chop your ginger into thin matchsticks, and mix this in a sealable container with the hoisin sauce, sugar, star anise (just the one) and finely chopped garlic. Once all mixed together, cut the sausage into small pillows and stir gently with the sauce, allow this to marinade for a few hours. Your probably best, like me, to do this the night before, and leave it to sit (covered) in the fridge.





Once this has been given time to absorb all of those fantastic flavours, put your oven on it 200c. Create a little tray out of tin foil for your pork to sit in by tearing off a large square and folding in the edges a few times, overlapping them. As shown below:

Then sit this another much larger piece, this will then wrap bully over the top, trapping in all of the air:

Cook this in your oven for around 40-45 minutes. Around this time, grab a small ramekin and we can make the dressing, it's really easy and the spice and sweetness works really well with the pork.

Chop the top from your chilli, and roll this along your chopping board, this should force most of the seeds out of the chilli. Slice this into thin rings and throw into the ramekin, along with your honey and groundnut oil. Mix this all together, cover with cling film, and leave in the fridge to cool.

After 45 minutes, slice the top of the tin foil open with a sharp knife and gaze longingly through the aroma at the presents within!
Serve this up with noodles or a simple spinach salad and coat with the chilled dressing, but most importantly, enjoy the fruits of your labour!

I wish you all a fantastic weekend guys, I'm now working on a few YouTube videos too, so if you have any ideas please leave them in the comments section below.

Dan

x