Spiced beef flatbreads

Your ingredients

Get ready: Kitchen scales, chopping board, mixing bowls, measuring spoons and a suitable saucepan or frying pan.

• 🍚Dough: 500 g plain flour
• 💧Dough: 300 ml water
• 🥣Neutral oil for coating and pan-frying
• 🍚Paste: 3 tbsp plain flour, pinch salt and 3 tbsp neutral oil
• 🥩Filling: 280 g beef mince
• 💧Filling: 60 ml water and 1 tbsp unsalted stock instead of cooking wine
• 🥬Filling: 1 tsp salt and ¼ tsp white pepper
• 🥬1 tbsp ground Sichuan pepper, or less to taste
• 🥬6 spring onions, finely chopped

Let’s make it

1. Rest the dough twice

   Mix dough flour and water, then knead until combined. Cover for 10 minutes and knead smooth. Coat lightly with oil, divide into 10 pieces and rest covered for another 30 minutes.

2. Prepare paste and filling

   Gently heat the paste oil, stir in its flour and salt and cook briefly, then cool. Beat beef with filling water, stock, salt and white pepper until sticky. Divide into 10 and keep chilled.

3. Stretch and roll

   On an oiled surface, stretch a dough piece into a long strip with a wider end. Brush with paste and sprinkle a little Sichuan pepper. Put beef and spring onion at the wide end. Fold dough around the filling to seal, then roll along the strip into a layered cylinder. Stand on one end and flatten to about 1.3 cm.

4. Fry in batches

   Heat a thin layer of oil in a heavy frying pan. Cook flatbreads over medium-low heat, turning, until golden on both sides and the filling reaches 75°C for 30 seconds, about 8–12 minutes per batch. Reduce heat and cover briefly if the outside colours before the middle cooks.

5. Keep practising

   Rest for a minute before cutting. If a strip tears, pinch it closed rather than starting again. A secure filling and cooked centre matter more than tidy spirals.