Making Guokui: A Delicious Chinese Pastry

To start making guokui, also known as crispy mala beef pancake, we need to prepare our ingredients and dough. First, let's make the dough. We will mix together 200 grams of all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of sugar in a bowl. Then, add in 1/2 cup of warm water and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, and stir until everything is well combined.

Next, we need to knead the dough for about 10 minutes, until it becomes smooth and elastic. After that, divide the dough into six equal pieces. Now, roll out each piece of dough into a thin sheet, about 3-4 mm thick. Make sure the dough is even in thickness so that our guokui will have an uniform crispy texture.

Now, let's move on to wrapping the guokui. Take one log, sesame side facing up, and press it with your palm to flatten evenly. Then, start rolling it at an angle, gently tuck the remaining strip over one end of the log, keep on twisting the log so that it naturally seals up, then twist and pinch the ending bit to seal, and press it onto the log to finish. For the other opening end, take the log, gently press it into a bowl of untoasted sesame seeds.

After we finish wrapping all six guokuis, we can start the final steps. So, take one log, sesame side facing up, pressing it with your palm to flatten evenly, and start rolling. Roll a couple times on one direction, then twist 90 degrees and roll out on another direction. Keep on rolling at different directions till you got something that’s about 15cm wide.

If you want the edge to be thinner and crispier, use one side of the rolling pin and gently press alongside the edge to flatten it out a bit more. You can roll and fry them all out and fry them all at once if you have a massive pan like they do on the street. But for us two guokui at a time works the best for our pan, so I’m gonna roll out two and fry them at first and leave the rest in the fridge until I’m ready for the next batch.

Or if you just want to have a couple and save the rest for next time, you can check out the pinned notes and see how to freeze them. And now we can start to fry. Heat on high first, till the pan gets to about 130C or when you hand can feel obvious heat, carefully put the guokui in sesame side facing down.

Swirl it around for even heating, let it toast for about 1 minute to form a crust first, then carefully flip and do the same with the other side, also for about a minute. And then, pour in some oil that’s enough to submerge half way of the guokui, turn the heat to medium low, and we’ll start the actual frying process.

Swirl it from time to time and flip it every minute or so to make sure that it fries evenly. Now just be patient, let it fry up slowly so that the beef and inside of the dough can be cooked through. When your guokui reaches this nice golden color, you can take it out, put it vertically in a tray line with some paper towel to let some oil drip out.

Or you can put your tray of guokui in a 170C oven for a couple more minutes to help further expel the oil. However, I tested both baked and not baked and didn’t seem to make that much of a difference, so this is totally up to you. Anyway, now your crispy mala beef guokui’s ready, you can devour it as a whole pancake right now, or eat it alongside with some spicy intestine noodle soup, just like they do in Sichuan.

So right, that’s how you make guokui, it’s a very tasty pancake that’s packed with a ton of flavor. Don’t panic if it breaks a little bit on you, that’s just it being puffy, crispy, and flaky. It’s one of those easier Chinese pastries with a very high deliciousness level. So right, remember to check out the recipe in description box and the pinned notes if you’re trying to make this.

And thank you for everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon, and subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThis crispy and flaky pancake may look like the Shanghai scallion pancake at first,  but it’s actually packed with a classic Sichuan flavor, mala numbing spicy. It’s  shallow fried for a crispy layered outside, and slightly leavened and  stuffed with beef for a soft and tender texture plus a flavorful bite inside.If you’ve been to China, you may think of this as Guokui  since it’s been a popular street food around. But depends on where you go,  you may think this, this, or this is guokui, and not this one in my hand.And, we’re all correct here. Because guokui is a widely used umbrella term. It’s a pretty  old food item that’s generally believed to have something to do with armies. The character 盔 in  its name suggest that it probably have something to do with armour or helmet.The several more well-known stories about the origin of guokui suggest that it’s either so  hard and thick that it can protect soldiers from arrows; or it’s so dense that can be kept for  a long time and thus fits for long-distance food supply during war time; or my favorite one is that  guokui is actually baked using the helmet because of the lack of cooking vessels on battle fields.Nevertheless, all of these legends are talking about the older style of guokui that’s plausibly  arrow-proof. As guokui spread, it started to morph into various forms and flavors, and lost its  armour like appearance. And it’s around Sichuan that we can find this crispy and flaky kind.Now, being very close to Shaanxi, which is believed to be the birth place of guokui,  Sichuan has its own many style of guokui, such as the plain one,  or the sweet kind that’s stuffed with brown sugar, or this crispy and savory kind.This style of guokui is from Junle county (军乐镇) outside of Chengdu,  it’s called Juntun guokui (军屯锅盔), meaning it’s a guokui from a military outpost. Historically  it’s also very similar to its flat bread cousin and it was baked but not fried.  But here we’re gonna show you the modern version that you’ll find on the street in Sichuan today.So to make guokui, let’s make our dough first. Here we have 300g AP flour, now mix in half  tsp salt on one side of the bowl, and then 0.3g or 1/8 tsp of yeast on the other side. Here we’re using a tiny bit of active dry yeast to mimic Chinese laomian starter because this  style of guokui dough is supposed to be mixed with some of that starter to slightly leaven,  but that needs a lot of experience for timing and tweaking, and I think  you probably don’t have that starter on hand anyway, so active dry yeast it is.So next, mix in 30g room temperature water aiming at the yeast, form it into a little  ball and take it out. Next, drizzle in 150g of 70C hot water, aim for the dry bits. After that,  we’ll also need 18g of caiziyou rapeseed oil, or use olive if that’s what you have.  Now knead the flour together, be careful it’s hot. And when it’s  no longer hot to the touch after kneading a bit, add back in that yeast flour ball,  then move onto a work surface and knead it together for about 6 minutes.After kneading, form it into a ball, cover it with enough oil so that the surface doesn’t dry out,  cover your bowl and let it rest for half an hour, or one hour if your room temperature is below 24C.  After the resting time, put it in the fridge to slow down the  fermentation. And while the dough is resting, we can prep the other stuff.First, our numbing component, one tbsp of huajiao Sichuan peppercorn. Just  toast it in a dry wok with low flame till it starts to leave oil splotch like this,  then take it out, and pound it into a powder, and set aside.Then we ‘ll make our yousu. A yousu is basically a roux to help pancake to create layers, just like  scallion pancake if you’ve made it before. So in a heat proof bowl with 42g flour, add in 1/2 tsp  salt and 1 tsp each of five spice powder and our huajiao Sichuan peppercorn powder. Mix them well,  then heat up 42g of caiziyou rapeseed oil, or lard, or any good quality oil you have on hand,  then heat it to 180C. Then pour it onto the flour, quickly mix it evenly, and set that aside.Next, we’ll be making our filling. Now this style of guokui usually has pork  or beef as two flavor options, pork being the classic savory and beef is often mala.  And we personally love that spicy numbing beef, so that’s what we’ll be making today.So here we have 90g minced beef, and to that add in 10g minced ginger,  1 tbsp spicy chili powder, all that remaining huajiao powder, about 4 tsp,  and 5g doubanjiang fermented spicy broad bean paste. Now just start mincing,  so that we can turn the mince beef into a paste, and let the seasoning well combined. About 10 minutes later, our beef is nice and pasty with a vibrant red color, then just put  it into a bowl, add in 1/8 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1/4 tsp each MSG and chicken bouillon, 2 tsp each  soy sauce and liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine for final seasoning, mix it all well, and set that aside.Now when things are ready, take your dough out from the fridge, and we can start wrapping. So  punch a hole in the center, shape it into a ring, then divide it into 6 even log-shape pieces,  between 80-85 grams. Then take one log, press it down with your palm to flatten it, then use a  rolling pin to roll it out on both ends, till you get something that’s about 50cm or 20inch long. Now one of the characteristics of making this kind of guokui is slapping it either with the  rolling pin or stretching it like hand-pulled noodle to evenly pull it out a bit more.  So just grab one end of the strip, gently put it around one end of the rolling pin,  lift the strip up, then slap it on the table one or two times. Then switch to the other end,  and repeat this motion. But don’t stretch it too much, otherwise it may just break.Now once the dough is roll out, take 1/6 of your yousu, smear it evenly onto the strip,  leave about 1cm along the sides and 10cm at the end for easier  sealing. And then grab 1/6 of the beef paste, place it alongside the strip,  then gently smear it out evenly, also leaving out the same space as the yousu.With both yousu and beef evenly applied, we can start to roll it up. And in order  to create a more obvious layer, we don’t want to roll it up too tight. So grab the far end that’s fill with beef, fold it over with about 4cm in one fold,  then fold it again, then again, until you reach the ending part with no fillings.Now, finish rolling it at an angle, gently tuck the remaining strip over one end of the log,  keep on twisting the log so that it naturally seals up,  then twist and pinch the ending bit to seal, and press it onto the log to finish.For the other opening end, take the log, gently press it into a bowl of untoasted sesame seeds,  then the wrapping is done, put it back into the bag to rest for 10 minutes. Now work through the remaining logs, if you’re moving slowly and weather is hot,  remember to keep all the logs and doughs in the fridge so that it doesn’t start fermenting again.After we finish wrapping all six guokuis, we can start the final steps. So take one log,  sesame side facing up, pressing it with your palm to flatten evenly,  and start rolling. Roll a couple times on one direction, then twist 90 degrees  and roll out on another direction. Keep on rolling at different directions till you  got something that’s about 15cm wide. And if you want the edge to be thinner and crispier,  use one side of the rolling pin and gently press alongside the edge to flatten it out a bit more.You can roll and fry them all out and fry them all at once if you have a massive pan  like they do on the street. But for us two guokui at a time works the best for our pan,  so I’m gonna roll out two and fry them at first and leave the rest in the fridge until  I’m ready for the next batch. Or if you just want to have a couple and save the  rest for next time, you can check out the pinned notes and see how to freeze them.And now we can start to fry. Heat on high first, till the pan gets to about 130C or  when you hand can feel obvious heat, carefully put the guokui in sesame side facing down. Swirl  it around for even heating, let it toast for about 1 minute to form a crust first,  then carefully flip and do the same with the other side, also for about a minute.And then, pour in some oil that’s enough to submerge half way of the guokui,  turn the heat to medium low, and we’ll start the actual frying process. Swirl  it from time to time and flip it every minute or so to make sure  that it fries evenly.Now just be patient,  let it fry up slowly so that the beef and inside of the dough can be cooked through.When your guokui reaches this nice golden color, you can take it out, put it vertically in a tray  line with some paper towel to let some oil drip out. Or you can put your tray of guokui in a 170C  oven for a couple more minutes to help further expel the oil. However, I tested both baked  and not baked and didn’t seem to make that much of a difference, so this is totally up to you.Anyway, now your crispy mala beef guokui’s ready, you can devour it as a whole pancake right now,  or eat it alongside with some spicy intestine noodle soup, just like they do in Sichuan.So right, that’s how you make guokui, it’s a very tasty pancake that’s packed with a ton of  flavor. Don’t panic if it breaks a little bit on you, that’s just it being puffy, crispy,  and flaky. It’s one of those easier Chinese pastries with a very high deliciousness level.So right, remember to check out the recipe in description box and the pinned notes  if you’re trying to make this, and thank you for everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon,  and subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.\n"