Marinate, roast, glaze, and pork dinner is served! I completely underestimated the wonderful art of marinating. Tender pieces of pork loin bathed in a sweet aromatic sauce, infusing exotic flavors into the meat. Yes! After roasting to a perfect temperature, a honey glaze slathers over the meat and amplifies every bite with sticky sweetness. Ooooh YES!
I saw the movie Chef on a very long plane ride, flying to the other side of the world. That movie is hilarious, and also sort of hits close to home. Food bloggers making chefs angry, cooking pretty food, tweeting things on twitter, and endless meatgasms.
“Meatgasms.” Yeaa! Several scenes in this movie show characters biting into delectable foods and being driven to culinary heights of mind blowing tastes. Clips where pieces of juicy BBQ meats are engulfed and melting faces into a satisfying MMMmmmm. And when they manage to recollect themselves from that delectable bite to speak, they’d gasp….”Oh YEA, Chef, that’s GOOD!”
It’s really awesome to see them get really excited over food. Even Leguizamo dances while massaging marinade into a huge piece of meat. Rubbing down slabs of meat with spices and sauces is enough to get anyone’s hips moving! Honestly though, who doesn’t want to shake their booty while marinading something meaty. 
Watching this movie was a bit of torture, in the sense that these meat scenes are reminding me how delicious marinated and roasted meat tastes. Meanwhile, I have crappy airplane meat scraps and Target brand trail mix. I wanted this instead!
Chinese flavors with typical Paleo, and even Whole 30, substitutions make up the marinade. Coconut aminos (aff. link) is the Paleo substitution for soy sauce, however is less salty and more sweet than soy sauce.
Honey makes a wonderful natural sweetener for this dish, and traditional char sui is made with a sweet honey glaze and/or marinade. For a Whole 30, a less sweet but incredibly delicious replacement for honey is pear juice and apple sauce.
After soaking in the fragrantly sweet sauce, the pork loin is roasted and finished with a honey glaze for a heavenly dish. To 145 degrees Fahrenheit baby.
One bite, and your face will soothe into an expression of luscious and delectable taste. Then you will tell me, “ooooOoooh, YES Fondue, that was sooooo goood!!” 
- 2 lbs Pork Tenderloin
- ½ cup of Coconut Aminos (or ⅓ cup of Gluten Free Soy Sauce)
- ¼ cup of Honey (or Pear Juice)
- 2 Tablespoons of Sesame Oil
- 3 Tablespoons of Mirin or Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1½ teaspoon of Chinese 5-Spice Powder
- 6 Garlic Cloves, minced
- ½ Yellow or Vidalia Onion, minced
- 2 teaspoons of Grated Ginger
- 1 teaspoon of Black Pepper
- 1 teaspoon of Sea Salt
- (optional) 1 Star Anise
- ¼ cup of Honey (or Applesauce)
- 1 Tablespoon of Coconut Sugar
- 1-2 Tablespoons of Hot Water
- Cut the pork loin into 6 equal pieces.
- Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a glass bowl or plastic ziplock bag. Add the pork loin pieces and marinate for 4 to 8 hours.
- Preheat oven to 325F.
- Grease a baking rack with oil and set over a roasting pan.
- Place the pork pieces on the rack.
- Bake at 325F for 20 minutes and remove from the oven.
- Mix the glaze ingredients together and heat on medium for about 5 minutes.
- When the pork has baked for 25 minutes, remove the pieces from the rack and place flat on the roasting pan.
- Increase oven heat to 425F.
- Brush all the pork pieces with the glaze and return the pan to the oven to bake for another 5 minutes at 425F, rotate once halfway through.
- Pork is done when the internal temperature reaches 145F.
Fondue Notes
- Simple fruit puree and juice substitutions for honey are made for a Whole 30 option.
- Chinese five spice powder is 1 part each of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground fennel seed, ground star anise, and szechuan pepper.
Original article: Pork Char Sui
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