7 simple, delicious Chinese-inspired barbecue recipes

We often think of pork belly as a slow cooking cut – either to be roasted or braised over a long period of time – but cut it into thinner slices and you can happily sear it on a barbecue. This recipes takes inspiration from a Chinese barbecue classic – char siu pork – and combines char siu and oyster sauces to give the pork an incredible flavour as it chars and caramelises on the barbecue. Slide your moreish pork belly slices into a silky bao bun, finish with a soy sauce-infused tomato relish and scrambled egg and you have the ultimate breakfast bao!

We often associate hoisin sauce with duck, but hoisin and chicken are a match made in heaven too – as the chicken cooks, the hoisin marinade caramelises and chars giving you amazing depth of flavour. A smashed cucumber salad does a superb job of mellowing the richness of the chicken skewer, cutting through the hoisin and soy sauce with the tang of black vinegar. Shu’s trick – learnt from her mum – is to smash and salt the cucumber first, so it absorbs all the flavours from the dressing.

Anna Hansen is a master when it comes to balancing complex flavours, and she puts her skills to full effect with this clever barbecued aubergine dish. The marinade balances sweet teriyaki sauce with sour tamarind paste and salty soy sauce, with a spicy kick at the end courtesy of some chilli oil. Once you’ve made your marinade, just rub it generously into your aubergine pieces and char them on a barbecue.

If you love getting stuck into something messy at a barbecue, this is a recipe for you. Preparing crab can be a bit of a chore, but cooking the claws on a barbecue is easy work – just get your coals nice and hot, and cook the claws for about five minutes on each side before cracking them and covering them liberally in chilli garlic sauce, chilli oil (with sediment, preferably), Shaoxing wine and a bit of rice wine vinegar. Finish them with a few thinly sliced spring onions for a bit of crunch and you have another simple dish to please your guests. The only difficult bit will be waiting for the claws to cool down before you eat them!