In the char siu, the temperature and taste of the tip of the tongue of Hong Kong Island are preserved.
The Hong Kong-style char siu that is warm to the time on Hong Kong Island is the affectionate taste given by the years, and a char siu recipe that has been inherited from time is the taste of ingenuity. Hong Kong Island Chronicle, visiting more than 100 old char siu shops on Hong Kong Island, extracts the secret recipe of char siu from the time when the sweet aroma of char siu is wafting around. Crispy skin, meaty, juicy, fresh and sweet - Hong Kong Island Kee char Siu, with the taste given by time, inherit the food of Hong Kong Island, just want to let you at the other end of this time for a long time, in a simpler, faster, simple and pure way, directly feel the affection of a piece of char siu.
Everyone has a beautiful char siu in their hearts, and everyone has a tongue-tip obsession about char siu in their hearts.
Seeing this brilliant sentence, you must think of it as a line from a documentary.
In fact, this is the slogan of Hong Kong Island.
Char siu is a traditional dish in Guangdong Province, belonging to the Cantonese cuisine family, this dish is a kind of Cantonese roast flavor, mostly red, made of lean pork, slightly sweet. The dish is to hang the marinated lean pork on a special fork and grill it in the oven, and a good char siu should be soft and juicy, bright in color and full of flavor. Among them, fat and lean meat are better, called "semi-fat and lean"; other dishes made with char siu include: char siu rice, char siu buns, char siu crisps and so on.
Some people say that char siu is not only a blessing, but also a culture.
On the eve of the National Day in 2021, Kaidianbang approached Zhang Fujun, the founder of Hong Kong Island Chronicle, to appreciate the whole process of this traditional delicious upgrade and iteration at close range.
Part 01
Zhang Fujun: A good char siu must have "five haves"
Zhang Fujun said: "A good char siu must have time, emotion, temperature, tone and attitude. ”
The birth of a piece of Hong Kong Island Ji's delicious char siu requires more than 20 ingredients, dozens of processes, 3900 Minutes, and the focus of time.
First, the selection of materials: the persistence of "one word plum"
Different from the favor of ordinary char siu for pork belly, Hong Kong Island Kee char siu only uses a special part of the pig's body, "one word plum".
There are only two of these plums per pig, the length is only about 12 centimeters, and the average weight is not more than 8 pounds, but it has a delicate meat quality and delicious taste that cannot be compared with any other part.
The fat-lean ratio of these two pieces of "small fresh meat" is uniform in its own way, and it is rare that the whole pig can achieve a uniform transition of fat and lean texture and form a clever gradient.
The indescribable tender taste presented by this magical gradient, and the feeling of abundance between fat and bursting juice, can make senior char siu masters can't help but praise: "So beautiful!" ”
Second, the ingredients: secret sauce secret spices
The mysterious recipe of "secret sauce" is the meaning of Hong Kong Island Kee char siu.
Using more than 20 kinds of ingredients, spices and pure natural herbs, in a fine proportion of accurate to milligrams, added one by one in strictly prescribed order, mixed into juice through 6 processes, the proportion is slightly offset, the order is slightly wrong, and the taste is absurd.
This secret sauce can give the char siu a rich aroma and taste, and can also correct the taste of the char siu during the marinating process.
Hong Kong Island Kee Char Siu Secret Sauce does not allow the addition of any artificial colors and spices, MSG is a big taboo, only the secret juice blended from pure natural materials can truly interpret the char siu spirit of Hong Kong Island Kee "big taste to true, true taste to big".
3. Sugar Coating: The Magic of Maltose
Dip the plums in the sauce and marinate for 30 minutes, then coat them with maltose that has been specially adjusted to the consistency ratio before being placed in a special char siu oven for the first roast.
Maltose is important to the taste of char siu, and only when uniformly coated with maltose of a specific consistency can it be baked with a brilliant, rosy and shiny, crispy crust and sweet flavor.
4. Baking: A delicious piece of char siu must be roasted twice
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Part 02
Achieve standardization and strive to create a chain brand of the head of the char siu subdivision track
Hong Kong char siu rice has categories, no brands, and no head enterprises. Because the entire supply chain is not particularly perfect, Hong Kong, including the south, most of them are cooked by chefs and are not standardized. Based on the reality that there is no brand and the supply chain has a certain threshold, Zhang Fujun saw a small blue ocean, and then plunged in and began to solve the problem of standardization in the char siu rice track. Because he knew that as the pace of chains accelerated, it was simply not realistic for each store to train qualified chefs.
Subsequently, Zhang Fujun first started from the upstream, opened the factory to the table, began to expand the store, and made efforts in the input of char siu food.
As a result, Zhang Fujun, a northerner, began to start a business in Shenzhen and fought from the south to the north, forming a pattern of dual headquarters in Shenzhen and Tianjin. Coupled with the co-founder's 30 years of experience in Hong Kong, product research and development quickly took shape, in 2016, the first store in Shenzhen officially opened, ending the history of char siu is just a platter in various restaurants, making it officially presented to consumers as a "mainstream identity".
Speaking of the main features of Hong Kong Island char siu rice, Zhang Fujun said that char siu fish has been standardized, and the meat used is a one-word eyebrow meat.
The rest have realized artificial + industrialization, to the semi-manual and semi-mechanical state, which greatly improves the work efficiency. Because some traditional processes are still inseparable from traditional processes, it is equivalent to putting the master in the front, combining industrialization at the factory end to produce qualified semi-finished products. In this way, although the taste uniformity of 100% is not achieved in the store, it is not a problem to achieve 80% reduction.
Zhang Fujun's vision is to achieve the upgrade of version 2.0 on the basis of the original version 1.0 and make it a full-time genuine tea restaurant. In order to achieve this goal, Hong Kong Island set up a factory in Qingyuan, walking in front of the entire subdivision track, taking the lead in achieving standardization.
"In the future, the factory will have three categories: one is roasted pork, including char siu; the second is the roast meat series; and the third is the brine series, focusing on Chaoshan brine. The first category belongs to the internal supply, mainly serving our stores; the latter two categories are produced according to customer needs and belong to the external expansion of business scope. ”
Because there is a direction and a strategy, therefore, the seemingly small char siu track, Zhang Fujun handed over the report card of more than 500 franchise stores, and invited mr. Xu Shaoxiong, a famous Hong Kong movie star, to endorse it. Hong Kong's classic old movie stars endorse Hong Kong's classic char siu, which can be described as complementary.
"Time has changed. However, there is a taste that remains the same, some memories remain unchanged, and there is a 'Hong Kong Island Chronicle' that still ignores the changes in the world, and is only willing to calm down and use a good char siu to inherit the delicious food. ”
In terms of building a supply chain, Zhang Fujun laughed that he was also "forced" at the beginning, and many catering categories have ready-made supply chain companies, direct cooperation is on the line, but the supply chain of this category of char siu is broken. Of course, when I began to try to cooperate in making frozen products, many teachers shook their heads and said that this category could not be frozen, but could only be made fresh. It's no wonder that in Hong Kong, good char siu is sold while making it.
But the reality is that if you want to do chaining, you must standardize; to standardize, you have to do freezing. So, Zhang Fujun thought of building his own central kitchen. After a small test, he felt that it was OK, but the production capacity was obviously insufficient, so he had to continue to move forward and build his own factory in Qingyuan. Later, after some teachers came to visit, they also began to try to make frozen food when they returned. "At that time, I asked if I could do freezing, and the teacher scolded me, and now, I have begun to change my concept."
Part 03
Flying close to the ground, Hong Kong Island char siu rice is definitely not a waste
Six years of tempering and innovation, to create a mature team, can not be said to be invincible, at least in the char siu shop franchise can be regarded as no blind spot.
The portrait of the franchisee is very simple, and there are more entrepreneurial stores, such as husband and wife stores. If a person makes money, there will be a chain reaction, and his relatives and friends will also start a business together. Among them, there is a franchisee who has now opened the 11th store, and the identity has also been upgraded to a small boss by the original store owner. In short, to engage in franchising is to return to the essence of business - let franchisees make money. In this way, the original idea of developing from South China to East China and North China was realized.
Zhang Fujun said that although the current store type is generally dine-in + takeaway, some stores have a good location, but the dine-in is too busy to come, so they have to cancel the takeaway. Shenzhen Science and Technology Park store is a representative of this type. Later, Zhang Fujun thought of a way to open two stores in a business school, only selling dine-in food in a good location, and the passenger flow of slightly more local places was not so large, so he took takeaway.
Good ideas coupled with the empowerment of franchisees, from the perspective of franchisees to think about the problem, with practical combat plus theory, gradually smoothed out the stumbling blocks on the road to joining, so that franchisees really made money.
Of course, full custody is certainly not realistic, but the online operation of the takeaway business has achieved full custody.
Because the foundation is firmly laid, the development below also forms inertia. In the next three or five years, Zhang Fujun's plan is to break through thousands of stores and carry out the "ultimate cost performance" to the end, so that consumers can spend very little money and can eat well and full. This form, there is also a nice name called sticky flying, using the advantages of its own unique supply chain to give consumers greater benefits.
In order to achieve this goal, the Hong Kong Island Kee Char Siu Rice Factory is also expanding, and the first phase of the project will be completed by 4,000 square meters, and the second phase of the project will be 6,000 square meters.
It is believed that after the completion of the 10,000-square-meter factory upgrade, the efficiency of the supply chain will be greatly improved, and the pace of Hong Kong Island Kee store expansion will also be accelerated. Because, with the taste of time, is the taste of eternal good.
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