Lunar New Year is the peak season for eating Bak Kwa — thin slices of sweet barbecued pork; similar to jerky — so every year stores increase prices to capitalise on the feverish demand and there are long, long queues, not to mention a limit on purchase quantity. This year, people has started queueing in front of a store in Chinatown the night before!

Turns out it’s actually simple to make Bak Kwa at home. Lemme share with y’all the step by step of how to do it.

The backstory:

A year ago, Kiss92’s Charmaine Yee asked me to be a guest in one of her CNY videos where we tried making Bak Kwa for the first time, and then did a blind taste-test against the retail version. Even though I love eating Bak Kwa, the thought of making my own batch at home had never ever crossed my mind! But after seeing the recipe that Charmaine shared with me, it didn’t look all that difficult so I hacked the original recipe a bit and prepared a batch.

And what a SUCCESS that turned out to be! When we did the blind taste-test, we found that the store-bought one is tough, not as flavorful, and definitely nowhere near any hint of juiciness. In contrast, our homemade Bak Kwa was fragrant, had a juicy bite, it was ro-ro-robust in flavors. The difference was night and day, I kid you not.

It was such a cool and unexpected experience for me so this year, I decided to invest a bit more attention into the recipe and modified it slightly again. Last year I bought a packet of ground meat and hacked it with minced pork belly. This time I bought pork fat *separately* and pulverised it using my food processor first before mixing it with ground pork. Both times I let the meat mixture marinade overnight in the fridge. I believe these small modifications enhanced the result greatly.

Homemade Bak Kwa Recipe

320 grams Ground Pork
80 grams Pork Fat, minced
80 grams Sugar
1 tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1 tablespoon Light Soya Sauce
2 tablespoons Fish Sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese Cooking Wine
1/2 tablespoon Sweet Soya Sauce
1/8 teaspoon Five Spice Powder
a dash of Ground White Peppercorn
1 tablespoon Honey
1 teaspoon Water

Mix all ingredients except the last two and stir until the meat become sticky.

Cling wrap the bowl and place in refrigerator overnight.

Spread the meat on the baking paper, place a cling wrap on top and roll flat using rolling pin.

Remove the cling wrap and bake in preheated oven 160 degree Celsius for 15 minutes.

Take the meat out of oven and place onto a cutting board.

Set the oven to 230 degree Celsius on grill mode.

Slice the meat into smaller pieces, change the baking paper and place cut pieces on it.

Prepare honey glaze by mixing water with honey.

Brush the honey glaze on both sides of the meat.

Bring the meat back to the oven, grill one side for 3 minutes and the other side 3 minutes.

Monitor the oven closely as the meat will be burnt easily.

Place the meat on wire rack to cool.

Trust me, Bak Kwa is not difficult to make at all and after you take a bite of the result, you may not want to buy from the store again!!!

I will make this again soon and for the upcoming version I’m going to try incorporating bacon slices…*dun~dun~dunnnn~~~* That’s gonna be exciting, isn’t it? Follow me on my Instagram or my Facebook page to stay in touch, stay updated, and see what else I’m up to.

Gong Xi Fa Cai,
Moon.