Macau Pork Chop Sandwich

Located about an hour away from Hong Kong by boat, Macau is a haven for gamblers and gourmets alike. People travel from all over Asia to party in Macau’s many casinos, but enthusiastic eaters know that the city’s real treasures are edible ones, like bacalhau (salted cod cakes), bak kwa (beef and pork jerky), and caldo verde (potato and kale soup). I spent most of my childhood in neighboring Hong Kong, and on long weekends, my family would head across the Pearl River to Macau. Because my sisters and I were too young to enter any of the casinos, we spent most of our time visiting cultural landmarks and…you guessed it, eating.

Macau is a former Portuguese colony, and its cuisine is a unique combination of Portuguese and Chinese flavors. Popular dishes that reflect the two influences include minchi, a stir-fry of onions, potatoes, and minced meat (usually beef or pork) served with an egg and fried rice, as well as Macanese pastéis de nata, an egg custard tart that’s ever so slightly less creamy than its Portuguese counterpart. The crowd favorite, though, may be the pork chop bun, a humble sandwich consisting of a deep-fried bone-in pork chop encased within Chinese-Portuguese marraquetas, crusty rolls with soft interiors. 

It’s the specialty at Tai Lei Loi Kei, a restaurant in Macau’s Tai Pa village that has won over the hearts and stomachs of locals and tourists alike since it opened in 1968. Even Anthony Bourdain was a fan. Though my parents never took me to Tai Lei Loi Kei—something I’m still bitter about—I have many memories of eating pork chop buns, both in Macau and Hong Kong. As a child, I was a sucker for anything bone-in, and anytime I had a pork chop bun, I’d take the time to carefully gnaw at the chop until the bone was polished clean. 

People don’t usually make pork chop buns at home—they are café fare—but because I don’t live near any restaurants that serve it, I’ve taken it upon myself to recreate it in my own kitchen. After many attempts to get it right, I’ve finally arrived at my ideal pork chop bun: a salty-sweet sandwich with tender, flavorful bone-in pork nestled into a toasted, buttered pineapple bun. This is the version that feels truest to me, and is the one I crave the most when I’m reminiscing about the pork chop buns of my childhood.

The Pineapple Bun—Delicious on Its Own, Even Better Stuffed With a Pork Chop

Though the marraqueta is most commonly used for pork chop buns in Macau, many eateries, including Tai Lei Loi Kei, offer the option of enjoying the pork chop inside a split pineapple bun, so I’m not veering too far from tradition. (Marraquetas can also be difficult to locate outside of Hong Kong and Macau—another reason why I decided to go with the pineapple bun here.) There’s no actual pineapple in the bread; its name comes from the crusty sugar topping that resembles the fruit. Just as sweet Hawaiian rolls make a great accompaniment for salty hot dogs, the pineapple bun’s subtle sweetness and plush interior are excellent counterparts to the crisp, fried pork.

These pastries are sold at Chinese bakeries, but if you can’t find them, you can substitute with Portuguese or kaiser rolls. Portuguese rolls may have inspired the marraqueta used in Macau today, but the kaiser roll is much closer in texture to the marraquetas of today.

Why Bone-In Pork Chops Beat Boneless Hands-Down

When I first started developing the recipe for this sandwich, I tested it with boneless chops, thinking they’d be easier to eat in sandwich form. But there’s a reason that restaurants in Macau continue to use bone-in pork chops—they’re just so much juicier! With bone-in pork chops, you get the fatty, most delicious parts of meat near the bone, which gets cut off along with the bone on a boneless pork loin chop. Trust me, I fried countless pork chops—so many that our babysitter at the time, who didn't know what I do for a living, thought (with some concern) that my husband only ate piles of pork chops. The boneless pork loin chops just weren’t as flavorful as a bone-in chop, even with a dry brine. (More on that below.)

Both boneless and bone-in pork chops come from the tenderloin, a long muscle between the shoulder and hind leg. Some cuts are fattier than others; my preference is for the rib chop, which contains a good amount of fat and is juicier and flavorful when cooked. The rib chop also makes the most sense for a sandwich as the bone is off to the side, making it easier to eat in the bun. Though center-cut pork chops are tasty on their own, I’d steer clear of them for the sandwich as the bone in the middle makes it a pain to eat between two slices of bread. 

Look for thin-cut pork chops that are about 1/2 inch thick; we’ll use the ridged side of a meat mallet or the dull side of a Chinese cleaver to gently pound the meat all around the bone until it’s an even 1/4 inch thick, which helps tenderize the pork further and makes the chops a more appropriate thickness for the sandwich.

Brining the Pork Chops

As is the case with many beloved foods, there are various opinions about how to best brine and season the pork chop for this sandwich. Many recipes floating around the internet call for a wet brine, but as we’ve discussed many times on Serious Eats, a dry brine is often more effective than a wet one for producing juicy, well-seasoned meat. As former editor Sasha Marx wrote in his guide to dry-brining, “Flavor molecules, unlike salt, are for the most part too big to penetrate the cell membranes of a piece of meat; your brine may taste flavorful, but your roast will not.” Water dilutes flavor and impedes browning, which is why we almost always advocate for dry-brining your meat instead.

Dry-brining involves seasoning the meat all over with salt (and sometimes additional things like baking soda), which helps draw out moisture. That moisture then dissolves the salt on the surface of the meat to create a brine out of the meat's own juices. The meat is then able to reabsorb the salt along with some of those juices, moving it from the surface to the interior of the meat. “As with a traditional brine,” Sasha writes, “the salt re-shapes and dissolves muscle proteins, allowing the meat to absorb and retain moisture.”

Beyond what kind of brine to use, there’s also the question of how long to brine the meat —and what to season it with. In his marinades investigation, contributor Tim Chin found that the ideal marination time was generally between one and eight hours. After testing with three different brining times—one hour, four hours, and eight hours—I found that the pork chops marinated for four hours and eight hours were much more tender and flavorful than the ones that sat for just 60 minutes. If you have time to spare, I recommend letting your pork chops sit for the full eight hours. If not, four hours will suffice. 

I took another page out of Tim’s book: marinating the pork chops with baking soda and MSG. Tim’s research found that raising the pH of a marinade by incorporating baking soda helped to improve a protein’s ability to retain moisture. “High pH makes it harder for intramuscular proteins to associate and bond tightly when cooked,” Tim notes. “Water gets trapped in the spaces between proteins, so the meat holds on to more water and stays juicy.” Adding baking soda to a marinade, however, isn’t a new phenomenon. As Tim pointed out, it’s a common technique in Chinese cooking. And in Macau, cooks often use it to prepare pork chops for this sandwich.

Tim’s testing also found that MSG is highly effective in seasoning the interior of meat. Based on his findings and my own testing, I added a touch of MSG to my dry-brine, which resulted in pork chops with deep umami notes.

The Spice Blend

Finally, there’s the spice blend for the pork, which is mixed right into the dry brine with the salt, baking soda, and MSG. Plenty of recipes incorporate soy sauce and Shaoxing wine, but neither of them gave me the flavor I was looking for. Even when used in small amounts, the flavor of soy sauce seemed to overpower the rest of the spices. Recipes I consulted varied in the spices used; some have a pretty straightforward blend of five spice, salt, and white pepper, and I’ve seen ginger, sesame oil, curry powder, cumin, coriander, and sugar used, too. Some recipes, like the one on the popular YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, incorporate thinly sliced onions, smashed garlic, and a heap of dried bay leaves. In theory, marinating your pork chops with alliums sounds delicious—but in my tests they didn’t make a significant difference in how the meat tasted.

I ultimately landed on a fragrant mixture of cumin, coriander, white peppercorns, dried bay leaves, five spice, and dark brown sugar, a mixture similar to the one used on Chinese Cooking Demystified (minus the onions and garlic). Instead of just tossing in the bay leaves, though, I toasted them with the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, and white peppercorns to bring out their complex aromas before grinding them up. The combination of salt, brown sugar, and spices infuses the meat with a sweet, warm, and slightly smoky flavor, with a touch of herbaceousness from the bay leaves.

Frying the Pork Chops

Traditionally, the pork chops for the sandwich are deep-fried, giving them an even, well-browned exterior. But don’t worry—I won’t task you with setting up a deep fryer in your kitchen! I will, however, have you shallow-fry these chops, as frying them in plenty of oil is traditional and it’s a remarkably efficient way of cooking that helps the pork remain juicy and succulent.

Putting It All Together

Once you fry the chops, all that’s left to do is wedge them into your halved and buttered pineapple buns and dig in. It’s a humble sandwich that doesn’t require much effort to make—just a little marinating time and a good fry. Just do me a favor and really gnaw those bones clean.