Chashu pork or “yaki-buta” 焼き豚 can be made from different cuts of pork. I used to make it from pork loin but it tends to be too dry since it does not contain enough fat. I also made it from pork belly which is good but it is a bit excessively fatty for this type of preparation. Because of the COVID, we started having groceries delivered. They come directly from the warehouse (I suppose) rather than the retail store so some items are different from what is available in the store. One of them is pork shoulder/butt. This is a cut we have never seen at the store. It is a large portion; either shoulder or butt but it is always called “shoulder”. The butt is composed of a portion of butt (naturally) including thigh down to the knee joint. Sometimes the skin is intact. The shoulder cut contains a good portion of scapula and surrounding meat. It is quite a large amount of meat. The only way to cook this cut as a whole piece is probably “true” Southern style barbecue, cooked for long time at low temperature. Since we are not equipped/skilled to do such a preparation, I reduce the piece into more manageable portions by removing the skin (if present), and bone, then dividing the meat into three potions; the largest roast for cooking in our Weber grill, the smaller roast for Chashu and the rest cut in to small chunks for stew or curry. This time we got butt and the portion I made into Chashu was a perfect mixture of fat and meat. So I made Chashu egg which is the combination of sunny-side-up egg (I used home pasteurized egg) with a thick slice of Chashu.
