Bak Kua

I've always liked bak kua. Bak kua is basically a type of meat jerky usually eaten during the Chinese New Year.

It is very expensive for Malaysians or Singaporeans. For the price it is sold, it's presumably expensive by London's standard as well. That is why bak kua is a "presentable and posh" gift in house visits during CNY. It's not so much about people giving you meat, it's the price of the gift!

A kilogramme of bak kua is £14.50. But that's what we pay in KL. In London, that's sold at £50/kg. That's approximately 12 slices of bak kua, 13 if I could chat up the cashier. That's like paying more than £4 for a slice of ham! That's why I think it's still expensive by London's standard.

And it's not worth "smuggling" bak kua into the country as foreign meat products are banned from entering.

I'll be celebrating CNY in London this year. But CNY without bak kua is like Christmas without mince pies. So enough is enough. I decided to make my own bak kua this weekend.

With the wonders of the internet, I found plenty of bak kua recipes. One was Lily's recipe. The recipe was simple and ingredients easily available. With so many recipes available on the internet, it's just a matter of time someone perfected one to give Bee Cheng Hiang or Kiew Brothers' a run for their money. After all, bak kua as I realised, was neither too difficult nor expensive to make on our own. At the end of this article, you'd realise how much it cost me to make bak kua here.

Fiona came to help. We took 2 days to prepare and cook. One day to marinate and the other to bake and grill.

Marinated pork mince

Engineers work around constraints. In the absence of a rolling pin, we used a glass.

Meat over a baking tray to 3mm thickness

Baked meat cut in squares for grilling

The finished product

The result was surprisingly good - in appearance and taste. It was better than we expected, considering it was our first time. In fact, the appearance was so convincing when we served it to Amy, who came to visit, she couldn't believe we made them from scratch.

We got 9 slices of bak kua with 500g of pork mince. Total cost: £4.

Now I'm quite confident of an affordable supply of bak kua well into CNY. Orders, anyone?