Whenever barbecue is mentioned, Aaron Franklin comes to mind. The long queues over at his shop in the US and the enormous slabs of briskets being smoked comes to mind. Locally here, we don’t have that many choices. I tried a couple of places such as Beard Brothers BBQ and a couple of food trucks and most of the time, it was completely underwhelming. I don’t know but they tend to overly season their briskets with black pepper and the meat had very little taste in them.
So when I saw a video of another place called Yat Sing Smokehouse and it featured pork meat instead, I decided to try them out instead. First thing first, you don’t get any beef briskets and when I wanted to order them, they didn’t have their famous pork ribs. That is fine especially for me since I have sort of eaten enough Iberico ribs to last a while. The order of the night was pulled pork, pulled lamb and pork belly together with 3 sides.
When I went to collect the food at their place, it reminded me of Aaron Franklin’s place. A house used to smoke meat with piles of wood lined up at their front porch with a smoker placed at the front.
Right next to it was the smoker, it isn’t very large hence all orders need to be pre-ordered and they have a limited quantity that they can manage each month.
Upon receiving my order, I headed back and bought some freshly made sourdough bread as well to accompany the dishes.
The baked beans were one of the side dishes and it was fantastic. Not the typical type you get from cans but rather from barbecue places and it went perfectly well with the sourdough bread. Also, it went quite well with normal bread as well as I ate the leftovers the following day!
The highlight of the meal to me was the smoked pork belly. Totally awesome and flavourful. I loved how the meat was tender and also great to be eaten with the other side dish that came (but I forgot to take photos), coleslaw. How they basically cook it (based on the videos they have shared on their social media sites) is to actually cut the pork belly already into cut down sizes. Very different from the way how you would make roast pork or charsiew where it is either the entire pork belly slab or individual strips. Because they are already cut down, they can marinate each piece before cooking them in the smoker. This creates a nice slightly charred effect on the meat side and if you are like me and love the pork fat, the whole thing just melts in your mouth. You can definitely taste the distinct smoky taste with each bite of the pork belly.
Both the pulled pork and pulled lamb came with a slightly spicy sauce (separate to allow kids to also enjoy the meat). The pulled pork meat was on the leaner side, so it doesn’t disintegrate which makes it absolutely perfect to be stuffed into sandwiches or wraps. Eating them alone would be a sin as once you mash it up with a bit of the spicy sauce, throw on some coleslaw and you got a nice sandwich. But let’s talk about the lamb, it still has a little bit of its gamey taste which some people may not like. If you are a fan, you would definitely enjoy it and I preferred the lamb over the pork that night.
Overall these two types of meat are to be eaten with the sourdough bread but I think with the leftovers that I have, I shall attempt eating them in a wrap instead together with some coleslaw and a little bit of mustard.
All in all, the meal was excellent and it is definitely a place that I would re-order again and hopefully, I can get to try their pork ribs the next round.
You can find Yat Sing Smokehouse on the following social media links below:
- Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/yatsingsmokehouse/
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJGzK-IMSP/
- WhatsApp – wa.link/lam638
