I wanted to cook a really good butcher's pork cutlet on the Kamado Joe, but there was a challenge: my wife, Diana, is Malaysian, doesn't eat pork and particularly dislikes its smell. She was willing to give this a try, so the dish needed to be genuinely exceptional rather than a straightforward grilled pork chop.
The idea was to lean into familiar Malaysian-friendly flavours: Chinese five spice, tamarind, ginger, garlic, soy, oyster sauce and a glossy sweet-sour glaze. A sharp, crunchy green apple slaw balances the richness. Rather than a heavy, strongly smoked pork dish, the plan was to cook the cutlets juicy, sear them quickly and finish with a fragrant lacquer.
My chosen sauce: extra tamarind glaze, reduced separately into a spoonable finishing sauce, rather than the peanut-lime alternative.
Cooked on my Big Joe, tested, and it's good. Serves 2–4, depending on the size of the cutlets: one each.
In October 2026 Claude, Codex and Grok gave it a once-over, with no major changes. The reserved sauce is now split, so the brush never goes near the sauce you serve. The glaze goes on only at the end, so the honey doesn't burn. And the fat is trimmed and rendered, because unrendered fat is where most of the pork smell lives.
Tamarind pastes vary dramatically in strength and acidity. This assumes a typical cooking paste, not an intensely concentrated extract: taste the marinade before the pork goes in. It should be tangy but balanced by the honey and the soy. If the five spice overwhelms the pork, use a touch less next time.
On temperature: 63°C and a rest is the US guidance for a whole cut, and it keeps the cutlet juicy. Australian advice is 70°C; if you'd rather follow that, take it off the grill at 68°C.
