Easy Homemade Char Siu Sauce

3 pieces of char siu chicken on a blue and white plate.

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This homemade Char Siu Sauce recipe works for chicken and pork- it's an easy Chinese sauce better than lee Kum kee char siu sauce according to my testers!

Course: Main Course, Side Dish

Cuisine: Cantonese

Servings: kg of meat

Calories: 396kcal

Author: Zen

Ingredients

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons yellow bean paste An authentic Chinese recipe would use taucheo but miso and doenjang are more common in American kitchens and acceptable subsitutes. If you want to skip this entirely, you can follow the char siu sauce in my char siu chicken recipe instead
4 tablespoons light soy sauce
4 tablespoons white sugar
1½ tablespoons Shaoxing wine dry sherry is a decent substitute
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

To Use The Sauce (with 1 kg of meat)

Mix the ingredients well.
Marinate the meat for at least 4 hours then bake at the appropriate temperature (different cuts of meat- e.g. pork neck vs pork belly)- would require different temperature/ cooking time.
Important: Keep an eye on the meat- we want some char on the meat but the sugars will burn quickly at higher temperatures (around 200 C/ 392 F) so you will need to cover the meat with an aluminium foil midway through cooking.

Notes

Note: some people like to brush the meat with 1-2 Tablespoons honey after baking and before serving. Personally I find the sauce sweet enough so I skip this step.

Nutrition