Traditional Chinese meat pie(馅饼) with beef, large scallion and onion.
Traditional Chinese meat pie provides a crispy wrapper and savory filling. There are in fact many types of meat pie popular across the country. The fillings differ from one house to another. You can use pork, lamb, beef etc. This is a popular beef and onion version.
Cook’s Note
About the filling: flavors of the filling decide whether the pancake is delicious or not. I highly recommend adding Sichuan peppercorn powder, which is widely considered as the best spice for beef in China in the filling to enhance the aroma. In order to make the filling juicy, usually water, stock or other liquid content is added. I use egg this time to increase the viscosity of the beef filling.
About the dough : the dough contents a larger amount of water, compared with other regular dumpling wrapper dough, so you will find it is very easy to knead and wrap because of the softness. There is just a little bit kneading needed in the process.
Steps
To make the filling. Add beef, ginger, scallion, salt, sugar sichuan peppercorn powder and white pepper powder. Blend 10 seconds. Add egg, light soy sauce, sesame oil, shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Blend for another 10 seconds. Stir the filling by hand for minutes until sticky.
Spread large scallion white on top and then drizzle around 2 tablespoons of hot oil. Mix in chopped white onion. Mix well, cover and set in fridge. For beginners, I recommend set the filling until slightly hardened if you have enough time.
Add salt in all purpose flour and then add hot water firstly. Gently stir the hot water in. And stir in cold water too. Roughly knead to form a dough. No need to be smooth. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.
Re-knead the dough, it should be smooth very quickly. Cut into 30g portions (doubled size from dumpling wrappers ) and then roll out to wrapper. Seal it completely. Avoid the edges meeting the filling, otherwise the sealing work is hard to complete.
Place the pancakes in a pan with oil, slightly press the center so the bottom can contact with the pan in better ways.
Heat until the side becomes crispy. Then turn over and fry the other side. Once the two side becomes well browned, slow down the fire and over with lid and let the pancake heat for another 2 minutes. This can further cook the inside part and make sure the inner part is well cooked too. Then remove the lid and heat both side for another 30 seconds separately until the surface turn crispy again.
Transfer to oil paper to remove extra oil and enjoy!! Meat pies are always a little bit salty, so make sure you match it with some light and healthy vegetable soup.
Ingredients
Filling
- 300 g beef , with 15% to 20% fat
- 2 large scallion , finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp. Sichuan peppercorn powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 green onions
- 1 thumb ginger , sliced
- 1 tbsp. light soy sauce
- Pinch of fresh ground pepper
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp. oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp. sesame oil
- 1/2 tsp. sugar
- 1 tbsp. Shaoxing cooking wine
- 1/2 middle size white onion
For the dough
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (300 g)
- 1/2 cup hot water over 90℃ (120ml)
- 60 ml room temperature water , plus 10ml more for adjusting
- 1 tbsp. vegetable cooking oil
- pinch of salt
Instructions
Beef filling
- Add beef, ginger, scallion, salt, sugar, Sichuan peppercorn powder and white pepper powder. Blend 10 seconds. Add egg, light soy sauce, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Blend for another 10 seconds. Stir the filling by hand for minutes until sticky.
- Spread large scallion white on top and then drizzle around 2 tablespoons of hot oil. Mix in chopped white onion. Mix well, cover and set in fridge. For beginners, I recommend set the filling until slightly hardened. The filling is for 2 batches, 20 pancakes. However the dough is for 10 pancakes each time. If you want to use all of the filling once, double the dough.
Dough
- Add salt in all purpose flour and then add hot water firstly. Gently stir the hot water in. And stir in cold water too. Roughly knead to form a dough. No need to be smooth. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.
- Re-knead the dough, it should be smooth very quickly. Cut into 50g portions (10 pancakes from this batch) and then roll out to wrapper. Seal it completely. Avoid the edges meeting the filling, otherwise the sealing work is hard to complete.
Frying
- Place the pancakes in a pan with oil, slightly press the center so the bottom can contact with the pan in better ways.
- Heat until the side becomes crispy. Then turn over and fry the other side. Once the two side becomes well browned, slow down the fire and over with lid and let the pancake heat for another 3-5 minutes. This can further cook the inside part and make sure the inner part is well cooked too. Then remove the lid and heat both side for another 30 seconds separately until the surface turn crispy again.
- Transfer to oil paper to remove extra oil and enjoy!! Meat pies are always a little bit salty, so make sure you match it with some light and healthy vegetable soup.
Notes
Nutrition
loving the sound of a chinese meat pie.. definitely need to try out the recipe!
Thalia, the making process is quite fun and I do love the come out very much too.
Are these served with a sauce? Looks great!
Hi Burns,
You can serve it with a chili sauce-like sweet chili sauce. But it is ok to serve them directly.
These look delicious. A question: can these be made ahead – kept in the fridge or freezer?
Yes, cover with plastic wrapper and overnight in fridge.Longer time is not recommended!
What would you add to this for presentation? bed of lettuce.
Hi there,
It is mint leaf.
So I saw this dish in one of Anthony Bourdains many shows, found this recipe and decided to make it right away. So I’ve just mixed the flour, salt and water and the dough is very wet almost batter like. My question is do I add more flour or should I wait until it cools down to room temperature.
Edit: So I made the dough, after adding extra 250g of flour. Made the filling, tried it raw. It tasted kind of strange(but this was my first real Chinese dish I ever tried or cooked). Cooked the first pie and it was very nice.
Hi Lojze,
Thanks for the feedback. Apologizes, I made a mistake about the water. It should be 1/4 cup hot and 1/4 cup room temperature water. Do you mean the filling tastes strange to you?
It was the first real Chinese food I ever tried. I’m used to the taste of soy sauce and sesame oil. But the taste of five spice surprised me. Also the dough would be more crispy if you rolled it thinly spray it with some oil and maybe sprinkle it with some salt. Fold the dough and roll it again. So you get thin layers of dough.
I love five spice powder very much. And hope you will get used to it soon. Thanks for your suggestion about the thin layers and wish you happy cooking ahead.
I just saw your recipe for Chinese Meat Pie. It sounds good. I’m wondering what does floccule texture look like and what part of beef or pork do you use ie……tenderloin, roast, steak?
Hi Rahnee,
I use tenderloin for this recipe. But steak should work fine too.
That’s one thing I don’t need to know how to make… There was a little place down the street from Shaanxi Normal University, and it was so hard to resist then. If I can make them at home? That’s too tempting.
Hi Kaedi,
Ops, I am sorry Kaedi that I cannot catch enough information about the ideal food. Can you describe it more in details, how it look like and ingredients you remember. I think it might be something like this one: https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/chinese-hamburger-pork-belly-buns/.
These are great, I was in China two years ago for 2 months, I love the meat pies, Now the peppers ouch LOL
Glad to have found out how to make them my self,
I do miss a lot of the real Chinese foods I had there, And my friends too,
Hi Terry,
I believe there must a big list you are missing. There are lots of yummy food here in China.
Happy cooking and I hope you enjoy your own homemade version.
Hi, I just made these because it looked quite simple which it turned out to be just so. However, the recipe calls for 1/2 cup of meat instead of 1/2 pound and the amount of water to be added should be a touch more. The recipe also has too much soy and a bit too much five spice. The five spice became bitter to taste, and I only used 1/2 of what was asked for. As for the dough, I had to add a couple more tablespoons full of water. It made the sough softer.
Hi, I would love to see a rou jia mo recipe if there isn’t already one!
Hi Yang, here you go https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/chinese-hamburger-pork-belly-buns/