How to out-deli a Cantonese deli in 3 easy steps

One of the first Chinese foods a Westerner will taste on that initial, soul-changing trip to Chinatown, U.S.A., will be slices of the roast pork shoulder the Cantonese call char siu, the outside reddish, sweet, and slightly charred, the interior meaty and juicy. Few could ever resist its charm, for it is almost like pork candy.

If I have one complaint with the char siu around here is that the best pork is rarely used, and so what one ends up with is often gristly and tastes less of pork and more of sugar. The best char siu, though, is a paean to pig, a thoughtfully made (though terribly easy) dish that simply requires getting a good cut of heritage pork, slicing and marinating it correctly, and then letting the oven do the rest of the work.

Charred caramel: half the fun

Part of the problem is that only one cut is perfect here: the shoulder, which for some strange reason is known as “pork butt.” There’s lots of good meat in the shoulder, as well as fat marbling which keeps the char siu moist. If you get a boneless shoulder already trimmed and rolled up for a roast, that is even better because half of your work is done. 

What I do is remove the butcher’s twine and find a natural opening in the roll. Then, I slice it around and around the roast into a long, ¾-inch strip that can then be cut lengthwise in half for ease of handling. 

(Pork ribs are great cooked this way, too; simply slash them diagonally on the meaty side, marinate, and roast as directed below.)

I've made a few modifications to the original recipe over the years: first, I like Fujian’s red wine lees for both its beautiful scarlet color (which means no food coloring is necessary) and deep flavor. Then, instead of lots of sugar and maltose, I use agave syrup, which has a lighter sweetness and works perfectly to both season the meat and give it that crispy charring.

Mix the sauce

Roast pork, or char siu

Chāshāo  叉燒

Guangdong
Makes 2 pounds or so

3 pounds (or so) boneless pork shoulder, preferably rolled into a roast by the butcher

¼ cup char siu sauce (Lee Kum Kee brand is good)

1 tablespoon Red Wine Lees

½ cup agave syrup, sugar, or melted maltose

2 tablespoons catsup

1 tablespoon Meiguilu liquor or other white liquor

1½ teaspoons regular soy sauce

1½ teaspoons ginger juice

1 teaspoon ground sand ginger (shājiāng 沙薑), optional but good

Spray oil as needed

 

Slice a shoulder in a spiral

1. Rinse the pork and pat dry with a paper towel. Have a large work bowl and resealable plastic bag ready. Remove the strings from the pork and find a natural opening in the side of the roast. Use a sharp knife to cut the roast into a long, ¾-inch thin meat spiral which will be nicely marbled with fat. Slice the meat crosswise into two long pieces. Use a sharp fork or knife to stab it all over so that the marinade can penetrate the flesh easily.

2. Mix the rest of the ingredients together in the large work bowl and add the pork. Toss it gently in the marinade to coat it thoroughly. Dump the meat and marinade into the plastic bag, press out most of the air, and seal it. Then, place the meat in the refrigerator for 6 to 8 hours to give the flavors time to insinuate themselves into the pork. Take the bag out every hour or so to massage the meat through the plastic and turn it over.

Marinate the sliced pork

3. Place a rack in the center of the oven and heat it to 350°F. Prepare a broiling pan or other large, rimmed pan and a large cake rack that fits easily into the pan; spray both with oil. Remove the pork from the marinade, but reserve any leftover sauce. Lay the slabs of meat on the cake rack so that they do not touch each other and bake the pork for around 15 minutes, then turn both pieces over, baste with some reserved marinade, and cook another 15 minutes. Raise the heat to 400°F and pour water into the pan so that the marinade doesn’t burn. Continue to roast the meat, turning occasionally and brushing on more of the marinade each time, until the pork is lightly charred all along the edges. Let it come to room temperature and slice it thinly before serving; leftovers can be stored in a clean resealable bag in the refrigerator or frozen for later use.

Crusty rice + Cantonese charcuterie = perfection

Cold weather brings out some of the best foods in the world, and this is especially true if you are a lover of pork. 

One dish that deserves to be categorized as perfect winter comfort food is this dish, a one-pot wonder that summons up all sorts of misty memories for me of huddling over a rickety table at the side of an alley, holding my frozen hands over the pulsating steam from my very own sandpot, and breathing in the aroma of the rice crackling and browning from the residual heat.

This is called làwèi fàn in Chinese, which literally means “charcuterie-flavored rice.” What a perfect name that is. And once you've come to know and love it, the main problem lies in finding someone who does it properly. You see, restaurants know that few people are willing to sit around for 25 minutes while a cheap meal is being made – they’re fidgety about their limited lunch break in any event – and so to keep people happy, the cooks tend to merely load up a small sandpot with steamed rice, layer some sliced charcuterie on top, cover it up, and then blast it with high heat to both melt the fat and crust up the bottom layer of rice. Which is okay, but it’s not nirvana in my book.

Ready for the steamer

No, to get the real effect of this wizardry, you will have to make it yourself. Understand, though, that it actually is super easy and only requires a bit of patience while it cooks away on the stove.

Before we get to that part, though, let’s take a look at what usually goes into this dish. Cantonese charcuterie is incredibly diverse, so you could find any number of good things in here, from salted duck or chicken to cured liver to feisty chunks of pink ham.

But I go for the classic combo: sweet pork sausages (what the Cantonese call lop cheong and everybody else refers to as làcháng  臘腸 ), duck liver sausages (yāgāncháng 鴨肝腸 ), and cured pork belly (referred to simply as charcuterie, or làròu  臘肉). Now is the time of year to hunt these down in your local Chinese market because they are never better than they are during this, the last month before Chinese New Year, which also happens to be called Làyuè 臘月 in Chinese. A coincidence? I think not.

Baby sandpot

Here then is my favorite recipe for a favorite dish. I have added extra fillips that season up the mix a bit more and make the rice a study in perfection: fresh Chinese black mushrooms, some white liquor, and a squirt of sesame oil toward the end to hasten up the browning. And now at last we get to the real reason for eating this dish, for it is all about the crunchy golden layer of rice at the bottom of the sandpot that fries up in the charcuterie drippings and that extra bump from the sesame oil.

This is definitely not a dish to get you ready for swimming suit season. But if you are more interested right now in hibernating in a big, warm chair than sweating off you winter layer of fat, lawei fan is just the thing to savor.

Crusty rice with charcuterie
Làwèi fàn  臘味飯
Guangdong

One serving

  

½ cup jasmine (aromatic long-grain) rice

1 lop cheong (sweet Cantonese sausage)

1 duck liver sausage

½ strip of cured pork belly

1 fresh (or plumped-up dried) Chinese black mushroom, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons (or so) finely shredded fresh ginger

1 tablespoon white liquor

1 teaspoon regular soy sauce

1 cup filtered water

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1. Prepare a small covered sandpot, preferably one with a handle, by rinsing it out. Place the rice in a sieve and rinse it under cool tap water; let it drain while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Rinse the charcuterie and pat them dry with a paper towel. Cut both sausages on the deep diagonal into thin slices. Remove the skin from the pork belly and slice it deeply on the diagonal as well. Remove the stem from the mushroom and slice it into thin pieces.

With a side of greens

3. Place the rice in the sandpot and flatten it into an even layer. Place the meats and mushroom on top however you wish. Sprinkle the ginger on top and then pour in the white liquor, soy sauce, and water. Cover the sandpot and place it on the smaller one of your stove’s elements before turning on the heat (see Tips). Bring the water in the sandpot to a boil and then cover the sandpot and lower the heat to the lowest setting. Set the timer for around 17 minutes, and then peek inside the cover to make sure that the rice is fully cooked and the water has been absorbed.

4. Pour the sesame oil into the center of the sandpot and raise the heat to medium-high, but keep the cover on. At this point you have to rely on your ears and nose to tell you when the rice is done: Listen for the light crackling noises of the rice being fried to a crisp and keep your nose attuned to the smell of popcorn, which means that the rice has been toasted. At this point, check the bottom of the rice by removing the sandpot from the heat and using a wide spoon to lift up one edge of the rice; it should be a tasty brown color. If not, return it to the heat and keep watch. Serve the dish while still hot and crackling.

Tips

Crusty deliciousness

Do note that this recipe is for one serving, but it can be multiplied as wished. Just be sure to have a small covered sandpot for each person. Also, you will need a small stove burner for each sandpot, since large burners will not only focus much of their heat around the edge of the pot, but also make the sandpot too hot to touch.

If only have two small stove burners and you want to make more than two servings, prepare these extra sandpots ahead of time up to Step 3 and keep them hot in a warm oven. Then, just before serving, brown the bottoms as in Step 4.

Jasmine rice is the preferred variety here. It is not at all sticky and emits a delectable aroma as it cooks. Basmati could be used in a pinch, but it is looser in texture than jasmine rice.

Amazing Hakka salt pork, green garlic & leeks

In the last post here, we talked about Chinese charcuterie and, more importantly perhaps, about how to make your very own Hakka-style salt pork.

 Now we're going to look at ways to transform those crusty coils sleeping in your fridge into dishes that are so good they practically defy description. But I'll try...

The only thing you really need to do with this cured pork is rinse it, slice it, and cook it. No seasoning is needed. At. All. 

You will find that these gorgeous porky slices embody just about everything you will ever want in a savory dish: meaty flavor, delectable fat, even-handed seasoning, and an enticing aroma. 

All you need to do is summon up a supporting cast. And since none of these are truly recipes -- more on the order of tossing things together -- I will just provide some general guidelines.

Green garlic

At the top here is a picture of a lovely breakfast or brunch dish that does complete justice to the salt pork: eggs and thinly sliced green garlic, as well as just a bit of oil to hasten the browning process. I added absolutely no other seasonings, and the dish was amazingly balanced.

Green garlic is available now around here for a brief couple of weeks, and I urge you to try this if you haven't already. 

At this stage in its life, garlic looks and acts a whole lot like leeks, which are their city cousins. Green garlic is much more rustic and yet also much more fleeting, as the stalks soon dry and brown as the garlic head matures.

Browned cured pork & leeks

When you buy either green garlic or leeks, look of course at the root end; the leeks especially should have plump white rootlets, while the garlic will withstand a little more manhandling due to its aspirations to grow up into a fat bulb. 

Most importantly, check the center of the leaves: do not buy either kind of allium if there is a flower stalk, which usually looks like a solid green stick. 

What does the flower mean? That the leek/garlic is already woody and tough, the leaves are getting ready to shrivel, and you will end up with very little to work with once you remove the stem.

Cured pork strips

To make this dish for two people, remove and discard the skin from half of a strip of the salt pork, slice the pork thinly against the grain, and then brown it over medium heat along with about 2 tablespoons oil. 

Wash and trim either two stalks of green garlic or one leek, making certain that there is no sand in between the leaves. Slice the green garlic or leeks very thinly on the bias and add to the browned pork. Stir them around over medium head until they wilt, and then add 3 or 4 eggs. Fry the eggs any way you like, and then serve up the dish.

A variation on this dish omits the eggs for a savory appetizer or beer snack or a nice side dish with plain congee: brown the sliced pork as explained above, add thinly sliced green onions or leeks, and then fry them together quickly with just a splash of rice wine to soften the veggies. 

Sliced cured pork

Finally, a very traditional Hakka way of enjoying salt pork is to trim and slice it as noted, and then steam the sliced pork on a plate it until done. 

Drain off the juices (save them for soup or a stir-fry, if you like) and serve the steamed pork with its fat still attached along with thinly sliced leeks or green garlic. 

The perfect dipping sauce for those who really want to scare off vampires is simply chopped garlic in vinegar. Save this dish for good friends you are not hoping to kiss.

Spice-crusted salt pork Hakka style

Charcuterie is considered by most of us in the West as a European concept. When we think of such marvelous inventions as sausages, cured meats, salted pork, and brined bits of pig, we almost instinctively bring up images of foods from France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, as well as Eastern Europe and a couple other places where the art of charcuterie is honored and has been honed to shiny perfection. 

Asia is generally not thought of as a hot spot for preserved meats, but hidden away in China are some of the most mouth-watering preparations you've never seen.

And to those of you who love Chinese cuisine, this should come as no surprise, for her dried and preserved and brined and salted ingredients are what give these incomparable foods their uniquely Chinese flavor. For example, beans are salted and cured to make everything from fermented black beans (douchi) to yellow bean sauce (doujiang) to crispy bean sauce (dousu) to even soy sauce. 

Fresh pork belly

Vegetables are given a similar treatment to turn them into umami-rich condiments like "plum vegetable" (meicai) and Tianjin's garlicky "winter vegetable" (dongcai), their flavors now nowhere anything like that of fresh leafy veggies, but more like pickles adept at the art of subtlety and subterfuge.

Like so many of these vegetal creations, meats -- including just about everything that swims, crawls, or flies -- can count on some the folks in some corner of China eyeing it for possible preservation. Although these techniques were initially designed to carry people through the coldest months of winter, nowadays when refrigeration and freezers make this little more than a past concern, cured things serve more than ever as easy and delicious ways to add depth of flavor to just about any dish.

When I lived in Taipei, one of my favorite haunts for hunting down these ingredients was South Gate Market. It had everything: fresh fish and meats, counters full of vegetables and fruit, stalls filled with women busy making local foods, bins piled with candy and dried ingredients, and a special section that arrayed dried and cured animal parts. 

There really is no other way to describe it. These were animal parts in all their wondrous incarnations: split whole fish, strings of sausages, and smoky pork legs all held from the ceiling on long poles, especially in the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year. Flattened dried octopus and squid were hung up in fantastical dioramas. Splayed chickens, ducks, geese, and even squab and quail hovered over the merchants like aromatic angels.

An array of seasonings for the meat

And the best part was that the making of these delicious ingredients called on traditions from all over China. Yes, Nanjing is known for its great salted ducks and Guangdong for its sweet pink sausages and Hunan for its smoky pork, but people from other areas arranged their families' specialties too around the edges of the market in anticipation of the steady stream of customers that packed the aisles.

Not everyone bought their charcuterie, though. Some, like my late father-in-law, who was Hakka Chinese, enjoyed making their own, which is perfectly reasonable since these meats are often quite easy to make, as with today's recipe.

Without a doubt the master of the family kitchen, Dad was a great cook and loved the things that reminded him of his ancestral home in rural Guangdong. He used to make cured meats and sausages when the family still lived in Taiwan, and this is very similar to one of his recipes. 

The meat has no saltpeter or curing salt in it, so it of course turns brown as it cures. The peppery crust, though, completely seasons the meat and seems to permeate every cell. This recipe will provide you with extra Ground Roasted Salt and Pepper, which you will soon find many uses for, as it is one of those seasoned salts that seem to complement just about every type of protein, including bean curd and eggs.

In the next post we will turn these beautiful cured pork strips into some divinely simple family dishes. Just like Dad's.

Seasoned salt rub 

Spice-crusted salt pork Hakka style  
Kejia xian zhurou 客家鹹豬肉  
Hakka

Makes about 1 pound, plus an extra ¾ cup or so of the Ground Roasted Salt and Pepper mix

1 pound natural pork belly

3 tablespoons white liquor (gaoliang; see Tips)

4 tablespoons whole Sichuan peppercorns

2 tablespoons whole white peppercorns

2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

½ teaspoon five spice powder

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

5 tablespoons sea salt

½ teaspoon sugar

1.  Rinse the meat and pat it dry. Cut it lengthwise into 3 or 4 long strips. (You can keep any skin on, if you want, as it will be removed before you cook the salt pork.) Rub every inch of the meat with the white liquor and let it marinate while you prepare step 2.

2. Dry fry all of the peppercorns, five spice powder, fennel, and salt (but not the sugar) over low heat until the peppercorns start to pop and the salt turns a darker color. Cool the seasoned salt and then grind finely. Mix about 3 tablespoons of the seasoned salt with the sugar, and then rub this mixture all over the pork strips so that every single area is thoroughly coated. (The rest of the seasoned salt should be sifted and all of the larger grains tossed out; store the fine salt in a covered jar, where it will stay fresh for weeks.)

3. Place the coated pork strips in a plastic container or resealable plastic bag along with any of the white liquor and seasonings that are still hanging around. Cover the container or close up the bag and refrigerate for at least 4 days. Shake the pork around twice a day so that each area of the meat gets evenly cured.

Roasted spices & salt

4. Try a piece to see if it is done to your liking by cutting off an inch and rinsing it thoroughly. Slice it thinly and fry without extra oil; it should have a wonderful aroma of spices and liquor, and you will not need to add any additional seasonings. If you want to let it get more infused with the flavors, leave it in the cure for another day or two. When it's just as you like it, pour off all of the juices and liquor, but don't rinse off the pork. Just remove the amount of pork that you want to cook and keep the rest refrigerated. It will stay perfect for at least a week.

Tips

As always, use the best natural pork available. The pork can come with skin or without, as it doesn't matter here.

Try to get pork that is half fat and half meat. In Chinese, pork belly is known as wuhuarou, or "five flower meat." What this means is that you should ideally have a nice layer of fat under the skin, then a layer of pink meat, then a layer of fat, then a layer of meat followed by a layer of fat. There might even be six layers if you are lucky, although four layers is fine, too. 

This layering in pork belly is what makes the cut so luscious when cooked right. As with Dongpo Pork, the fat acts as a buttery interlude between the thin layers of muscle, rendering them tender and juicy. 

The best white liquor for this and other cured meat recipes is, in my opinion, Taiwan's gaoliang liquor. The island of Kinmen (aka Jinmen) off the coast of Fujian is renowned for its gaoliang, and while it costs close to $30 for a bottle, it lasts a long time and possesses a wonderful fragrance.

Be sure and sift the leftover seasoned salt before you use it. Sichuan peppercorns, in particular, can be really annoying if left in largish pieces, as they become rock hard and end up feeling like sand between the teeth.

The smoked charcuterie of Hunan with leeks

Chinese charcuterie generally gets short shrift in the West because it still is pretty much unknown. But if food lovers could taste what it is that Hunan, Guangdong, and many other provinces have to offer in the way of cured meats and sausages, all of this could change in an instant.

Take for example Hunan's smoked cured pork, called Hunan larou in Chinese. It is a perennial favorite even in places like Taiwan, where there isn't an enormous contingent from that region, a testament to the intense flavor and juicy texture this variety of gammon supplies.

Like most Chinese charcuterie, Hunan-style cured pork is marinated and then air-dried for a few sunny winter days. But there the similarity ends. While most other cured meats are simply dried, Hunan's specialty is smoked over a cool fire, permeating the flesh with a sweet, heavenly flavor. Also unlike other varieties, this is a fairly moist cured meat that is taken from the picnic cut (upper front leg), salted and marinated with the skin on, and given a bit of curing salt to keep the lovely pink hue of the meat. 

The skin is often rather soft on a good piece of Hunan larou, so you can keep it on if you wish. Just be aware that the skin will pop a lot when exposed to high heat, as with stir-frying, so use a spatter guard. If you do remove it, keep it in a bag in the freezer with any other ham-like scraps and bones for tasty additions to winter soups, as it adds a gentle smokiness and depth to the broth.

Pink flesh with marbled fat

Nowadays there are some good brands -- some of them based in Taiwan or Hong Kong -- that offer meat produced in the U.S. Get those. They are vacuum packed and will keep for quite a while without refrigeration as long as the bag isn't opened. Once you do pierce the plastic, though, seal up the meat in a reclosable bag and store in the refrigerator for up to a week or so, at which point it might begin to suffer in quality.

When you choose a piece of cured Hunan pork, look for a nice, solid piece without a whole lot of scraps tossed in to max out the total weight. It should have a good piece of skin at one end with a layer of fat underneath. Avoid any pieces that look like they were taken from the shoulder, where there are lots of sinews and broken pieces of muscle interspersed with stringy fat. 

Cut off whatever amount you want, wipe it off with a damp paper towel, and then slice it up. If the meat is at all hard, sever off a hunk and then steam it on a plate for about 10 minutes, as this will soften it up considerably.

One of my absolute favorite ways to cook this is in a Hunan specialty called Hunan Cured Meat with Leeks, or suanmiao chao larou. We used to order this often at an old Taipei restaurant that specialized in spicy central Chinese cookery called Tianrentai. Located across from my personal temple of good food, the South Gate Market, it sat on a corner of Roosevelt Road, an artery that ran from the federal buildings all the way down past Taiwan University. Lots of great eating on that street, and more on that some other time.

A good piece of larou

Hunan is located in the central regions of China, just east of Sichuan and nestled next to Jiangxi province. Heaven knows what they did for seasoning before chilies were imported from the New World, but in the past couple of hundred years, those little red firecrackers completely transformed the local cuisine, as well as that of just about every other inland area to Hunan's west and south.

But back to the dish under discussion. Suffice it say that this dish was always ordered by us simply because nobody could do it better. Sweet shards of fresh leek were woven between the cured meat, thin slices of pressed bean curd (doufugan), fresh chilies, and loads of garlic and ginger. The sauce was a delectable balance between pain and pleasure: hot bean sauce (la doubanjiang) and sweet wheat paste (tianmianjiang). If you are a devoted chili head, feel free to amp up the heat with more fresh chilies and another scoop of the hot bean sauce, but try not to completely drown out the smoky flavors.

The pressed bean curd adds a nice counterpoint to all the serious flavors in this dish. Like so many classic Chinese dishes, this is another yin yang component: blandness against punchy flavors, soft texture with chewy, white against deep colors. It's all part of a package that guarantees perfect balance. 

One of my favorite Hunan dishes

Hunan cured meat with leeks
Suanmiao chao larou 蒜苗炒臘肉 
Hunan

Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multicourse meal

1 small leek or half a large leek
2 squares pressed bean curd
5 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1 cup thinly sliced Hunan-style cured meat
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons thinly sliced ginger
1 red jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon spicy bean sauce (la doubanjiang)
1 tablespoon sweet wheat paste (tianmianjiang)
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 teaspoons sugar
Roasted sesame oil

1. Trim the root end and the dark green leaves off of the leek and discard. Carefully clean the leek, making sure that all of the sand between the leaves has been removed. Cut the leek on the diagonal to make diamond-shaped pieces. Cut each beancurd square in half and then slice each piece horizontally into about 4 thin sheets.

The main ingredients

2. Heat the oil in a wok over high heat. Add the leeks and quickly stir-fry them until the edges just begin to brown. Remove the leeks to a plate or scoot them high up on the side of your wok. Add the sliced meat to the hot oil and quickly stir-fry them until the fat is translucent and the edges have started to brown. Again, remove them to a plate with the leeks or scoot them high up the side of the wok, but leave as much of the fat in the bottom of the wok as possible. Stir-fry the bean curd slices and add them to the leeks and meat once the edges have browned.

3. Toss the garlic, ginger, and jalapeno slices into the wok and quickly stir them around in the remaining puddle of fat to release their fragrance. Push them to the side and spoon both the spicy bean sauce and the sweet wheat paste into the hot fat; cook the sauces quickly to remove the raw taste and then add the wine. Stir it around for a few seconds more, and then return the leeks, meat, and bean curd to the wok. Sprinkle the soy sauce and sugar over everything and toss the ingredients well. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Dribble a bit of sesame oil over the dish and serve while very hot.

Mosquitoes, souls, and fried rice

Fall was in the air, as was the gray cloud of mosquitoes following me on my hike. They whirled around above and behind me in a frantic dance as if they knew that the coming frost would soon shoot them down, but they were content to bask in my heat rather than savor a last meal. 

These tiny companions on the trail reminded me of an ancient Chinese belief: that the soul of an evil man is crushed in a mortar when he dies, and this dust then takes flight as a swarm of mosquitoes. It also was thought that the souls of men and women didn't reside in their chests or brains, but rather hovered over their heads. That is why mosquitoes always like to cluster above us like buzzing eggs, for these fractured souls are drawn to the unbroken spirits of the living.

It was a long walk, and when I reached a windy area, the insects finally left me. The sudden gust of brisk air and my fast pace led me to ponder what would ease the gnawing in my stomach. Once I flashed on the contents of my refrigerator - including a container of cold rice and some savory Chinese sausages and cured meats - I knew exactly what we would be having: fried rice flecked with mushrooms, eggs, and those delectable meats. My walk down the hill suddenly was much faster than usual.

Cold weather is the time for both making and enjoying Chinese charcuterie. It seems that every region has its own specialties, and I would be hard pressed if forced to choose between Hakka salted pork, Jiangsu's "wind chicken," Hunan's gammon, the pressed salt-water duck of Nanjing, Taiwan's fat sweet sausages, and Cantonese cured meats and sausages, to name just a few. 

Chinese raw mixed grain rice

In the Chinese-style markets around here, though, the most common offerings come from Guangdong (aka Canton). Lovely long strips of fresh bacon called larou are cured and sometimes smoked, making a slightly dry meat that responds happily to steaming. Southern Chinese sausages tend to come in two forms - sweet pork sausages (lachang, or lop chong in Cantonese) and the darker duck liver and pork sausages called yaganchang - and nowadays you will almost always find them vacuum packed.

For the rice, I turned to something new: the blended whole-grains that offer more nutrition and flavor than plain old white rice. In addition to brown rice, these might also include purple, black, and red rice, as well as wheat, barley, and a grain called "maple-leaf rice." These also are available vacuum packed, but since they are whole grain, these varieties become stale fast and so should be closed-up tightly before being stored in the fridge and then used up within a month.

What I hadn't realized was that this new mixture makes superb fried rice. The chewiness and nutty flavor both add incredible depth to the dish, and they offer enough nutrition to make me think that this big bowl of comfort food might in fact have some redeeming factors. Be sure to steam the rice, rather than boil it, in order to preserve the chewy texture; you can steam it either in an electric rice steamer or in bamboo baskets, whichever you prefer.

There is one main rule for making fried rice that cannot be broken: the rice has to be completely cold. Anyone who tells you that freshly cooked rice can be used in a pinch is setting you up for a bowl of mush. So do as the Chinese do and keep your leftover rice; this is the absolute best use for it!

Toss the rice with vigor

Fluffiness is important in fried rice, too, and the only way to do that is to use a wok, a Chinese spatula, and toss the rice continually over high heat. Break up any clumps you run across and keep that spatula moving. You will be rewarded with a beautiful pile of ethereal rice that way. Also, sprinkle a bit of liquid on the rice as you toss it; this will shoot into puffs of steam that will also help to loosen up the rice and quickly heat it through.

When I use cured meats of any kind in fried rice, I always steam them with some Shaoxing rice wine. This does three things: it flavors the meats, softens them so that they are juicy rather than extremely chewy, and forms a lovely liquid that can be poured over the fried rice as it cooks, and this spreads the flavor into each grain. Serve this for a hearty breakfast or a delicious snack. But whenever you eat it, feel free to serve it in bowls with tablespoons for carefree munching.

Cantonese fried rice with sausages and cured meats 
Guangshi lawei chaofan  廣式臘味炒飯  
Guangdong

Serves 4 as a snack

Meats sprinkled with Shaoxing

2 Chinese sausages
6 inches Chinese cured meat
1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine
1 or 2 large organic eggs
3 fresh Chinese black mushrooms or rehydrated flower mushrooms
3 cups cold rice, preferably mixed whole-grain rice
Filtered water as needed
4 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil, divided
Reserved juice from the steamed meats
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
Sea salt to taste
2 green onions, trimmed and finely diced

1. Place the sausages and cured meat on a heatproof place, sprinkle them with Shaoxing rice wine, and then steam them for about 15 minutes. Reserve any juices for later. Trim the skin off of the cured meat and cut the meat into half-inch cubes. Cut the sausages lengthwise into quarters and then into half-inch wide cubes.

2. Beat the eggs lightly in a small bowl and set it next to the stove. Slice the mushrooms and then cut the slices into half-inch cubes.

3. Wet one hand and lightly toss the cold rice, separating most of the clumps and grains. Wet your hand as often as needed to keep the rice from sticking while you do this.

4. Set two small clean bowls and a serving platter next to the stove. Heat the wok over medium-high until it starts to gently smoke, add a tablespoon of oil, swirl the oil around in the wok, and add the eggs. Quickly fry the eggs until barely set, roughly chop them into half-inch pieces with your spatula, and remove them to one of the small bowls.

5. Heat another tablespoon of water in the wok over high heat, add the mushrooms, and stir-fry them for a few seconds before adding 3 tablespoons water. Quickly fry the mushrooms until the water has evaporated and the mushrooms are slightly translucent. Remove the mushrooms to the other small bowl.

6. Add the rest of the oil to the wok and heat it over high along with the diced meats. Stir-fry the meats until they start to crisp, and then add the rice to the wok. Toss the rice nonstop while it cooks, sprinkling it as you fry it with the reserved juices, fish sauce, and sugar. Taste the rice and add salt and more seasoning as desired. Cook and toss the rice for at least 5 minutes, or until it is light and fluffy. When it is almost done, toss the mushrooms and eggs. Toss for another few seconds and add the green onions. Toss for about 5 seconds to incorporate the onions and serve immediately while very hot.