I was craving some beef buns this week for some reason so here they are! This dish is pretty versatile as a dinner dish or simply as a snack. The fact that the dough only needs to rest 10 minutes before you can start rolling them out makes this a great last minute recipe.
Dough:
2 1/2 Cup Flour
3/4 Cup Hot Water
1 Egg or 1 Cup Cold Water (I used the egg)
In a bowl, add boiling water to the flour and mix. Add the egg or cold water and knead into a smooth dough. Set aside and let it stand for 20 minutes.
Filling:
3/4 lb Ground Beef
1/2 Tbs Sugar
2 Tbs Sesame Oil
2 Tbs Water
1 Tbs Cooking Wine
Pinch of salt and pepper
Mix the beef with all the seasonings, then add chopped green onion (the amount is up to your taste, I used about 1/4 cup of chopped green onion but you could easily double that if you really like green onions).
In my filling I also added some Korean glass noodles. This is not part of the original Chinese recipes but I feel the filling with just the ground beef was too bland and the noodle make it more interesting. Cook the glass noodles first. Run the glass noodle under cold water. Chop the noodle into short sections then add it to the filling.
On a lark, I made some small mini wanton shaped patties…
They were cute but the problem is once I start pan frying them the dough split open on me. I still like the mini wonton shapes but next time I would leave more room on the top so the hot air expansion wouldn’t split it open so easily.
So in the end I ended up going back to my trusty round shape beef patties. Gather the dough around the filling and pinch close.
Coat the pan with oil and heat it on medium. Fry the pan on low medium. Now, you can keep frying it by flipping the patties frequently BUT it takes forever for the filling to be all the way cooked through this way. So I cheat by putting in about 1/4 cup of water after the bun is seared golden on both sides and cover the pan for 5 -8 minutes. To check if the filling is cooked through, cut the bun in half. If the filling is still not cooked through than add a couple more Tbs of water and cover the pan again.
Once the bun is cooked through, uncover the pan and allow the water to evaporate on la ow medium fire.
Serve the buns with a soy dipping sauce.
Soy Dipping Sauce
4 Tbs soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbs Chinese black vinegar
1/2 Tbs Sesame Oil
Optional: Hot bean paste (or your favorite spicy sauce)