Chinese Meat Pie (Xian Bing) (2024)

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.