Chinese New Year · Charcoal-Grilled Meat Jerky

Bak Kwa

Photo: Chaerani (Meutia Chaerani) / Indradi Soemardjan / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Ahead of Chinese New Year, queues outside Chinatown's century-old bak kwa shops can stretch for hours, with shoppers lining up before dawn just to stock up on the sheets of glazed, charcoal-grilled meat before the holiday.

Thin sheets of marinated pork (or beef) are mixed with sugar, soy sauce, and spice, then grilled over charcoal until the edges char and caramelize into a sweet-savory, chewy jerky. It's sold sliced by weight from Chinatown's landmark specialty shops, piled highest in the weeks before Lunar New Year.

Why it's made this way: Bak kwa is a Hokkien delicacy carried to Singapore by Fujianese immigrants in the early 20th century, and it became a fixed Chinese New Year tradition here; Chinatown's retailers still air-dry the meat as in Fujian but finish it over charcoal rather than a hot plate, giving the local version its deeper sweetness and smoky char.