You make it...it's a fairly sweet Chinese BBQ sauce...as with any BBQ sauce there are many recipes....And if you live in the right spot you may be able to buy it bottled.
Posting a link.
Linda C

Here is a link that might be useful: Chinese BBQ

Hi Jasdip --

I was just going to say that the closest thing to Char Siu sauce would be something like Hoisin sauce, but with a whole bunch of honey added to it along with some five-spice powder... And then I opened Linda's link and saw that's essentially what they recommend! I am able to buy the Lee Kum Kee brand of Char Siu sauce in my local asian markets as well as in my supermarket. Here's what the jar looks like:

Here is a link that might be useful: Lee Kum Kee Char Siu sauce

I make char siu so infrequently, I end up using the Noh packaged mix. I really like it because it isn't sweet and thick like the bottled ones.

Here is a link that might be useful: Noh char siu sauce mix

When I have to made ethic dishes, often I use Google Translate to do a backwards foriegn language recipes search. You may find a more authentic way of making the dish. Here is what I found. A little clumsy in the translation. You can try for more.

dcarch

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Description into the Atlas (I think they mean the road map for making)
Common eating roast meat shop in Guangdong, the supermarket is not difficult to find. But sky is hot, cooked myself, is always to do is to eat a little more confidence. Southerners eat sweet, red supermarket pork taste is good, but sometimes people are too garish red total mind this was a little small.
In fact, the practice is not difficult, the required materials are mostly very easy to find, even the pork sauce can deploy themselves, so what, go and try yourself ~
Materials
[Ingredients]

Plum meat ...... 1
[Pork sauce seasoning]

2 tablespoons soy sauce ......
1 tablespoon oyster oil ......
1 tablespoon wine materials ......
Fresh Salt ...... 1 / 4 teaspoon
3 tablespoons granulated sugar ......
Honey ...... 1 / 4 cup
Five-spice powder ...... 1 / 2 tea spoon
1 teaspoon garlic ......
...... 1 red bean curd (red fermented bean curd to soften the meat, can hold)
Tools
Oven, grill, pan, tin foil
Practice
[Do pork sauce]

1. Pot open a small fire, put all the spices, stirring gently with a spoon until the sugar and fermented bean curd and other liquid materials completely fused together, Sheng out cool
[Practice]

1. Plum Wash meat, cut into 1 cm thick slices children, tiled in a clean container
2. The plum pork meat sauce poured into the container, so that each piece of meat fully covered with spices, then sealed with plastic wrap, refrigerate 2 to 3 days to fully marinated tasty
[Barbecue]

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees, within a layer of aluminum foil pan, put the marinated meat in the baking line, painted when some bacon sauce. Middle and lower classes into the preheated oven, 200 degrees bake 25 to 30 minutes
2.30 minutes, remove, turn over the meat and then brush on a layer of bacon sauce and continue baking 30 minutes
[Say one more thing]

1. Although it is own sauce, but the necessary materials have been enough food additives, red food dye so you can hold, in addition to no other to do with color, Just enough of a mouth feel taste.

This thread got me jonesing for char siu so I headed off to a new Asian market close by. OMG! It is huge and the selection is mid numbing!

I found both the jarred sauce and the dry packages mentioned in this thread plus picked up a ton of stuff that I have no idea what to do with like frozen rice pasta sheets! LOL

Tomorrow I'm cooking Chinese!

"----Tomorrow I'm cooking Chinese!"

I hope you meant Chinese style.

dcarch :-)

Ya know Dcarch, I thought of that the second I hit submit! LOL

For what its worth, I can't imagine making Char Siu using a powdered base... To me part of the key to the dish is the glazing and caramelizing of the meat. Even the thicker sweet sauces don't wind up tasting that sweet, since some of the sauce slides off with the fat during cooking.

Also, here's a link to by far my favorite recipe for Char Siu -- the very closest thing I've ever made to what I get in chinatown in NYC... I use strips of pork shoulder though, where this recipe talks about loin... The recipe and instructions are across several posts, all from the commenter named hzrt8w...

Here is a link that might be useful: Char Siu

I got that authentic Chinese restaurant eye-popping red char siu. The secret was an authentic Chinese restaurant ingredient. Red food coloring.

The next night, I managed a very similar red color sans the red dye, by adding lots of roasted and Cuisinart'ed beets to the marinade, basting occasionally during roasting with more marinade, and coating the roasted and sliced pork with the reduced marinade. So you don't actually need red dye to get that ''lucky'' red char siu.

The beets add more sweetness, which actually was not as popular with the family as the earlier, more savory version.

I believe a more traditional way to get redness involved red fermented soybeans, which I interpret as red miso, but I have not tried that. It would probably taste good.

We had the beet-red char siu plus some pork belly and yet another attempt at xiao long bao as appetizers. Main was some slow cooked beef shank with lots of gravy. Sides were roast potatoes which I managed to blacken under broiler (drinking when I should have been cooking) and some sugared and roasted carrots. Because only half the potatoes were salvageable, my second batch of ciabatta, with Irish butter, was pressed into service as the starch.

A fun dinner, but I'm looking forward to fresh spring veggies and fruit, al fresco dining, and a change from the heavily cooked and reduced winter dishes of which I'm getting tired. The next dinner's gonna be raw oysters, ceviche, pesto a la trappanese, lots of fruit, and sangria. If I have to wait until July.

John --

Looks delicious! Have you had any luck with Xiao Long Bao? They are my absolute favorite, but I've tried two or three times, once including making my own wrappers, and every time all the soup has leaked out of the dough. Do you have any magic technique to pass on?

Emily

I do not (have the magic). My broth either seeps out through the dough, or soaks into it, so that I end up with either a deflated bao or a tasty but squishy bao without the right ratio of broth to wrapper. Because xiao long bao is supposed to be all about the broth. You dont want to be chowing down handfuls of bao just to get 10 cc's of broth. The broth to bao ratio should be more like a water ballon.

I am fairly convinced that I'm missing some trick with the dough or the steaming - perhaps I am making the dough too thick so that they require too much steaming, or maybe I need to knead it more to develop gluten, or maybe the dough is supposed to include oil, or perhaps I'm just not getting the incantations right or not offering the right human sacrifices.

I am going to try again soon, and be more scientific about it - make five xiao long bao one way, five another way, and so on.

Here's why I have to get it right, and soon. Our friend is about to start an intense regimen to lose 15 lbs. It is interesting. She is 60 y/o, an awesomely beautiful woman - and notice I did not say ''for her age'' - and she's been doing some modeling. We think of modeling as a young person's gig and for the most part it is, but the ad agencies want older people too. But naturally they won't settle for normal older people, they want ultra-slim radiantly gorgeous older people. We're all supposed to look like Katharine Ross when we're getting our first smartphones at 60 y/o, you know? Anyway, to get back to the subject of food, when she finishes her regimen, we're supposed to celebrate with a beef tongue dinner. I really want to have my xiao long bao appetizer well figured out by then. Because, you see, not only is SWMBO is well aware of my infatuation with She Of The Beef Tongue, SWMBO has ratted me out by telling her friend that I have a crush on her. Talk about betrayal! Hasn't she ever heard of the legal doctrine of husband-wife privilege? So now I have to watch how much I drink around SOTBT lest I get caught openly staring. Which means I need something very distracting and non-alcoholic. Which a good xiao long bao certainly is. Not that mine are, but here's to never giving up.

I went to Google translate to translate "xiao long bao" to Chinese. I then copy the Chinese to youtube to find out how the Chinese do it.

Apparently the dough is very high gluten and the way they roll the wrapper makes the center thick and the edge thin.

dcarch

Here is a link that might be useful: xiao long bao

I am impressed with your dedication John -- I was so frustrated after my attempts that I vowed never to try again... But now that video from dcarch is making me long for them! The last time, when I made my own wrappers, I did make the edges thinner and the center thicker, but to no avail. Sigh.

Thanks, dcarch.

A detail conveniently omitted by every I'm-so-hip food blogger I've read, which makes me suspicious how much they are actually cooking as opposed to riffing about cooking.

Okay then. Next batch gets made with bread flour and 20 minutes in the Magic Mill.

translate "xiao long bao" to Chinese

''xiao'' is ''small''

''long'' is ''basket or cage'', here meaning the little bamboo baskets in which dim sum is often served.

''bao'' means ''bundle, wrapper'' or the action of doing so.

Interestingly, in menus the wrong character is often used, namely the version of ''long'' that means ''dragon''. That character omits the bamboo radical at the top. I guess it is simpler and phonetically close enough, and any Chinese-speaking person knows what it means anyway, so why not. It is confusing to me, though.