red food coloring
Chinese BBQ Pork
It’s called Char Siu. (Pronounced “Char Sue”) But we know it as Chinese BBQ Pork, and it’s of the most popular items on a Chinese Restaurant menu. I never thought of making it at home—it seemed complicated and intimidating. But when I finally decided to give it a try, I quickly found it is neither. It’s a fun, simple dish that ends up tasting exactly like the restaurant version! While it seems as though there are a lot of ingredients, it’s mostly inexpensive bottles of things like soy sauce, molasses, honey, rice wine vinegar—all things you can keep in your refrigerator so you can make this dish many times, which, I think you will! As far as the steps, it’s basically whisking the marinade ingredients, pouring it over the pork, refrigerating it overnight and then cooking it up! It’s that simple. The most important step is making sure you buy pork shoulder, as tenderloin is too lean. Char Siu may be your new favorite!
Watch my How To Video for Chinese BBQ Pork here!
Chinese BBQ Pork
Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake
The Story
Is it one of the most Googled recipes? At last check, there were 563,000 sites for Red Velvet Cake, with it’s dramatic, deep burgundy layers of chocolate decadence. That’s a lot of places to search for the signature sweet that originated in the 1920’s at America’s grand hotel of luxury and elegance, the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
But you can quit clicking, because we have the original right here.
It’s not the version that’s loaded with tons of red food coloring and very little flavor (you’ll find plenty of those in your search). This is the authentic and luscious Red Velvet Cake right from the Waldorf-Astoria Cookbook, given to us by the hotel’s executive chef, John Doherty (who is, by the way, the youngest chef ever to head the hotel’s three restaurants and exquisite room service, long known as the Waldorf-Astoria’s crown jewels).
But Chef Doherty has been at the helm for more than 20 years now, and has said that despite the attempts around the globe to improve this classic recipe (with little success, red velvet cake aficionados tell him), the hotel continues to serve it in it’s pure form. Chef, we love this cake. Here’s to the next 100 years of Rescuing Red Velvet!
