Recipe: Bak Kwa (Chinese-Style Pork Jerky)

What is Chinese New Year without hip-enlarging treats like the bak kwa?  US customs won't let me sweet colleagues bring them in for me nor my beloved friends and family send them to me so I have to experiment making them here.

I reached out to the Cook who could - Natx aka TaitaiMage - my fellow gnome mage from the World of Warcraft days and who lived in the Mountains here for a couple of years.  She started me off with a recipe mostly written in Mandarin and a "Good Luck!".  With additional research online, I huddled in the kitchen to experiment.

For a first try, it's actually pretty decent and tasted better than it looks.

I would use less dark soya sauce next time.

Ingredients
300g minced pork (the fattier the better)
1 tablespoon dark soya sauce (reduce amount if you don't want it to be as dark)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1.5 tablespoon light soya sauce
A sprinkle of 5 spice powder (I use this sparingly because I'm not crazy about its scent)
1/2 cup of sugar
1.5 tablespoons of honey
1.5 tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao wine)

This is what it looks like after the first step drying process.

Method
1. Think happy thoughts.
2. On a piece of parchment paper, spread thinly the ingredients all mixed together and gluey.  How thinly?  As thinly as you can manage without the parchment paper showing through.  Size the parchment paper to your baking tray by the way.
3. Bake in the oven at 180F or 80C for 30 minutes.  This should dry out the meat.
4. Cut into squares.  Size doesn't matter.
5. Up the temperature to 360F or 175C and bake for another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Get some charring to take place first before calling it done.  Keep an eye on the meat because it gets burnt easily.
5. Cool it down, EAT!  Letting it cool is important - otherwise you're going to think you got it wrong because it would not have the right texture

He goes to the gym frequently so he can eat a few more pieces lah.