Drew's Food Blog: Niu Rou Xian Bing (pan fried chinese hamburgers)... PICTURES AND VIDEO SOON TO COME

This is another favorite of mine... very similar to the egg/chive pockets described in the previous entry. I first tried these at my favorite Chinese restaurant back in the DC area (A&J's restaurant), where I've been going for like ten years now. I was instantly hooked and I order one basically every time I go there. The home made ones taste basically the same and are actually better, according to my brother.

Here's what you'll need:

- ground beef

- scallions

- soy sauce

- sesame oil

- peppercorn

- dough

- flour

- ginger

- MSG

First thing to do is of course to make the dough. We used three cups of flour and one cup of water (it was more than enough for four people). Pretty self explanatory, just mix it together and knead it until it's dough.

Put a tablespoon of peppercorn into a bowl and fill it up with three tablespoons of warm water. Let it soak for a bit.

Put the beef into a bowl and add the chopped scallions, chopped ginger, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, a pinch of MSG, three tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of cooking oil, and one tablespoon of sesame oil.

Once the peppercorns are soft, which shouldn't be TOO long, take them out (keep the water!) and crush them with a rolling pin:

Add the peppercorns AND the peppercorn water to the bowl with the ground beef mixture.

Mix it up until it's nice and homogeneous looking.

Now take the dough and divide it into about 12-15 parts. Take out a cutting board and sprinkle flour on it so the dough doesn't stick... then one by one, take each of the 12-15 parts and roll it out until it's a thin, flat circle.

Here's a video tutorial on how to fill each of them and roll them into the correct shape [The video is missing right now because my internet connection is too messed up to be able to upload videos onto youtube. I'm working on getting this fixed ASAP]:

Here's the end result of the wrapping process. Just a few of them: