Posted on by Information Seekers

Sichuan spicy beef pancakes (军屯锅盔)

Guokui! An absolutely classic snack throughout China, in this video we’ll teach you a classic mala spicy beef version from Sichuan.

0:00 – Wait, I thought Guokui was something else?
2:24 – Making the Dough
4:20 – Making the Yousu
5:15 – Making the Spicy Beef
6:30 – Portioning and Wrapping
10:00 – Frying
11:19 – How to Devour

INGREDIENTS

For the toasted Sichuan peppercorn powder:

* Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), 1 tbsp

For the dough:

* AP flour (中筋面粉), 300g
* Salt, 1/4 tsp
* Instant dry yeast (即发干酵母), 1/8 tsp or 0.3g
* Room temperature water, 30g
* Hot water (70C), 150
* Caiziyou (菜籽油), extra virgin rapeseed oil (菜籽油), 18g

For the Yousu:

* AP flour (中筋面粉), 42g
* Salt, 1/2 tsp
* Five spice powder (五香粉), 1 tsp
* Toasted Sichuan peppercorn powder (花椒粉), 1 tsp
* Caiziyou (菜籽油), or lard (猪油), 42g

For the Beef Filling:

* Minced beef (牛肉末), 90g
* Ginger (姜), 10g
* Spicy chili powder (辣椒面), 1 tbsp
* Huajiao Sichuan peppercorn powder (花椒粉), 4 tsp
* Doubanjiang fermented spicy chili paste (红油豆瓣酱), 5g
* Salt, 1/8 tsp
* Sugar, 1 tsp
* MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp
* Chicken bouillon powder (鸡精), 1/4 tsp
* Light soy sauce (生抽), 2 tsp
* Liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine (料酒), 2 tsp

PROCESS

*For the dough*:

Add in salt on one side, yeast on the other side, add in room temp water aiming at the yeast, form into small flour ball, take it out.

Add in the hot water, aiming at dry bits, then add in caiziyou rapeseed oil.

Start kneading in the bowl, when it’s not hot to the touch, add back in the yeast and flour mixture ball, knead it together for about 5-6 minutes.

Cover the dough with enough oil to coat the surface to prevent drying out. Cover and let it raise/rest for half an hour. Our ambient temperature is 30C, if your room temp is below 23/24C, let it raise for one hour.

Put it in the fridge after the resting time’s up.

When the dough is resting, prep the other ingredients.

—

*For the Sichuan peppercorn powder*:

To a dry wok, toast the 1 tbsp Huajiao Sichuan peppercorn kernels on low flame till you can see oil splotches. Take it out and pound it into a fine powder.

—

*For the Yousu*:

Put the flour in a heat proof bowl, add in all the seasonings, heat oil up to 180C, pour the oil into the flour and quickly mix it well. Be careful, the bowl will be hot.

—

*For the Beef filling*:

Put the minced beef, ginger, spices, and spicy broad bean paste onto the chopping board and mince it together into a paste, about 10 minutes.

When it’s pasty, put in a bowl and add in all the remaining seasoning, mix well.

—

Wrapping:

Take the dough out from the fridge, punch a hole at the center, divide it into 6 even log pieces, about 80-85g.

Keep the logs in the covered bowl, take one out, flatten it with your palm, then start rolling it out in both directions.

When it’s about 50cm (20 inch) long, gently take one end, put it over one end of your rolling pin, lift it up and slap it on the work surface, slap once or twice and repeat on the other end, the finishing strip should be about 1mm thick.

Take 1/6 of the yousu and smear into one thin layer, leave about 10cm on one end.

Take 1/6 of the beef filling, smear it evenly, be careful not to tear the dough, leave same space as yousu.

Take the end with yousu and filling, fold up a 4cm layer over, repeat with each fold about 3-4cm wide.

When reaching the end with no fillings, start rolling it at an angle, tuck the remaining dough over one end of the log, twist the log, and guide the strip to “cover” that end of the log.

Once there’s only ~5cm strip left in hand, twist it like you’re forming a noodle, gently pinch that “noodle-y” string onto the pancake, forming a simple swirl on one end of the log.

Gently press the still opened side of the log into a bowl of untoasted sesame seeds to seal.

Put the wrapped log back into the bag to prevent drying out, let it rest for 10 minutes, work through the remaining dough.

—

*Frying*:

After resting, take out the pancake logs for frying, put on a work surface, sesame side facing up, flatten with palm to a thick disc. Use a rolling pin to roll out a couple times in one direction, twist the disc 90 degree, roll it out a couple times again, repeatedly roll it til it’s ~15cm in diameter.

Use one end of the rolling pin to press along the edge of the pancake to thin out if you want crispy edge.

Heat a dry pan to 130C, place the pancake sesame facing down, roast for 1 minute, flip and roast the other side for the same time. Remember to swirl for even heating.

Add enough oil, about half way up the pancake, turn heat to medium low (oil temp ~120-130C).

Slowly fry the pancake, swirl it from time to time, and flip every minute or so to fry it evenly.

When lightly golden brown, take out and put vertically into a tray lined with paper towel. (Optionally further bake it in an 170C oven for ~3 minutes to expel oil)

______
And check out our Patreon if you’d like to support the project!
http://www.patreon.com/ChineseCookingDemystified

28 Replies to “Sichuan spicy beef pancakes (军屯锅盔)”

  1. Hey guys, a few notes:

    1. Hot water temperature should be around 60-70C, sorry that in the video it sounds like I said "7 degrees" haha. Hot water dough makes a very soft and extensible base for shaping, it’s a common dough for making flat bread or pancake in Chinese kitchen.

    2. Taking the flour and yeast mixture out first is to make sure the hot water that we’re adding in doesn’t kill the yeast.

    3. If your room temperature is very low, like between 10-15C, you can use a bit more yeast, say take a 1/4 tsp and use about 80% of it so that it still ferments during the resting time.

    4. The dough should only be slightly leavened. The purpose of leavening is to create a little bit of air bubbles so that it’s puffy and has that airy crispiness after frying. But you don’t want it to be fully fermented because that’ll create way too much bubbles and absorbs too much oil. There’re also fully fermented pancakes in Chinese cooking, but those are usually fried with a lot less oil or even just baked.

    5. SThere’re other options for seasoning the beef. Some places would add in Sichuan sweet bean paste tian mian jiang (甜面酱), or Sichuan fermented mustard green yacai (芽菜) for some more depth, or huajiao Sichuan peppercorn oil for a stronger numbness. So feel free to play with what you have, but remember to adjust the salt quantity if you’re doing so because sweet bean paste and yacai are both quite salty.

    6. You can also control the spicy level with the chili flake you use; we like ours to have a kick so we use a mix of kashimiri and Thai bird’s eye for both fragrance and heat.

    7. At guokui shops in Sichuan, beef guokui usually got black sesame seeds and pork ones got white sesame seeds to distinguish the two, but we only got white at home so that’s what we ended up using.

    8. To make a big batch and freeze: you can roll out all the pancakes into the final wide disc shape (the pre-frying shape), then stack them up with parchment paper on both sides, freeze it in a zip lock bag, thaw it overnight in the fridge before frying. Stays good in the freezer for about 2 months. However, the ones fried after thawing would be a bit denser than the freshly made ones.

    9. The oil type and quantity in the yousu roux may vary. Lard and caiziyou rapeseed oil are the two most classic oil used in the yousu for Sichuan guokui. Some shops would use a mix of lard and caiziyou in their yousu, and a ratio of 2 part flour and 1 part oil to create a solid yousu. Some shops would even just finely mince pork fat, mix it with salt and some spices, then use that as the oil component, the fat would melt and render during frying. The spices can also vary, five spice, Huajiao Sichuan peppercorn, and white peppercorn are the most common ones.

    10. So some shops in Sichuan would apply yousu twice, that is applying the yousu once, roll it up into a log, press flat and then out into a strip again, and then apply both yousu and beef. The purpose of applying yousu twice is to create more layers, but after testing both methods I don’t think it create too much of a difference. So to make things easier to follow here in the final recipe, I put the yousu and the beef together in one step, just like the shop we filmed in Sichuan.

    11. The toasting step before adding oil is quite important. I know we’re frying it with oil later anyway, but this toasting creates a soft “crust” and kinda “seals” the outer layers of the pancake and makes it less greasy inside.

    12. In Sichuan, especially around Chengdu, guokui is often sold at or next to a spicy intestine noodle soup (肥肠粉) shop. Somehow having a guokui together with that sweet potato noodle smothered with ultra soft braised intestine and spicy soup becomes a set meal. And it is a pretty good way to enjoy it, so if you’re having guokui, you can also try to have it alongside or dip it in some hot soups

    That's all for now! CCs will be out in a couple hours, sorry about that 🙂

  4. I like when Chris does the cooking prep because he has those sexy hairy forearms, Yeah I said it XD

  5. " one of the easier Chinese pastry" oh boy ???? this looks like a huge challenge but also nice!

  7. I have arthritis in my wrists. Using a cleaver for 10min is not an option — I'm not a masochist. 😉 Kneed for five min+ is also hard. Can I use a food processor or other tool for these things without sacrificing quality? I would welcome any suggestions — the recipe looks lovely.

  9. Looks amazing. I think I have all these ingredients. Sounds like a party.

  13. those look like they'd be amazing to eat while drinking! and i am massively curious about the pork version, makes me wanna break out my big ol rimmed cast iron griddle, seems like the perfect kinda pan to cook them in. (since the lip allows for pretty generous room for shallow frying, but its not as deep as a normal skillet, its great for making sure steam can get out of the pan and away from the food)

  15. Holy Fried Pancakes! I'm heading to Kuala Lumpur this week. I hope I can find a place there for this!

  19. For anyone in ???????? Singapore, you can get something similar in basement 2 of the Funan mall. They're the thinner and baked kind though, like the 烤饼 you get in Zhejiang, not fried like these Sichuan ones.

  20. Thanks for this recipe. I know I and a few others who would devour them. I look forward to making it! Recently I found Huang Fei Hong 'Spicy Peanuts' and can't imagine your viewers wouldn't love these crunchy, spicy and numbing peanuts. I was hoping your 'Real Chinese Appetizer' video would have given a recipe for 'Drunkard Peanuts' or 'Mala Peanuts'. I hope to find XSD (Xing Sheng De) spicy peanuts, and also try their Sichuan peanuts and Five Spice peanuts, but easily finding all of these XSD products in the US (as opposed to the Huang Fei Hong 'Spicy Peanuts') may be more of a challenge. Any other brands you'd recommend???

  21. My wife said “just spend 3 rmb and buy them in a street car next time we are in China” after watching. Haha

  23. Foreplay? Really? You get me all worked up and then just show a pita pocket. Oh, darn. I'm old, it doesn't take much to get me excited now.

  24. That military outpost is looking an awful lot like Total War Shogan 2….

Comments are closed.