Chinese Pork Jerky

I love and missed eating Bak Kwa (Chinese Pork Jerky). When I was a child, my uncle introduced me to this food. He brought it back from Singapore, Usually, tourist will buy this from a famous shop, called Bee Cheng Hiang. This pork jerky is expensive. Over the years, it is getting more and more expensive. I think this is not only the effect of inflation but also the popularity.

Although most tourist bought their Bak Kwa from Bee Cheng Hiang, I noticed, when I lived in Singapore, that the  many local friends prefer other shop, called Lim Chee Guan. The queue during the Chinese New Year period is always impossible. People can queue for hours, even before the shop is open. I have tried both shop, and I like both. They have different signature taste, but not everybody can distinguish the difference.

Although Chinese New Year has passed weeks ago, I suddenly had a craving for this, especially after browsing the blog of Sonia, Nasi Lemak Lover. To make it worse, our friend tried to make this a few days ago. So, I decided to make this pork jerky. My motivation was quite big, because Sonia made it seems quite `easy´. I used her recipe to make this.

It turned out quite good and similar to what I usually bought back home and not too sweet. Just as I would love to have.

My family love this also, except my oldest son. We ate it with warm rice and also as snack. I will try to persuade my oldest son to give it a try again. We will see if he will love this later.

The recipe and method are from Sonia, Nasi Lemak Lover

Ingredients (with some modification)
500 gr minced pork (the original recipe is 450 gr), with at least 10% fat
100 gr sugar

1 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp Chinese rice wine
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp dark caramel sauce or sweet soy sauce
1/4 tsp Chinese powder 5 spices
a pinch of pepper
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp honey (the choice of honey will affect the taste)


How to:
1. Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix everything until the mixture mixed well and forms a glue like consistency
2. Keep the mixture in the refrigerator for a few hours (I kept it for 1 night, since I have to spread my time. I only cook or bake when the kids are in bed)
3. Take out the mixture from the refrigerator, Line a baking tray with baking paper. I did that to make the cleaning easier and avoid some burned meat
4. Spread the mixture to form a thin, probably around 3 mm thick layer on the baking paper evenly

5. Bake the meat in the middle of the oven at 160 Celcius, 15 minutes.
6. Take out the meat and let it slightly cool. Cut the meat into squares/rectangles/desired shapes
7. Grill one side using top heat at 240Celcius for around 8-10 minutes or until it is golden brown with a slight burnt appearance.
8. Take it out from the oven and grill the other side of the meat for around 5-7 minutes until this side is also golden brown with a slight burnt.

The last step is to let the pork jerky to cool down and enjoy it.
I love to eat it with Indonesian yellow rice. With the result of this trial, I would like to try this method to make Indonesian beef jerky. The problem now is to find a time to do it.

My husband and I brought some to the office for snack and shared them with a couple of colleagues. The respond was quite good. Enjoy!