Hawawshi (Egyptian Stuffed Bread)
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Overview
Hawawshi is pita stuffed with heavily spiced minced beef and baked until the meat cooks through and the bread crisps. It is Egyptian street food, sold across Cairo and Alexandria, where it is also known as baladi. The story attached to it is unusually specific for a street food. It is credited to a butcher named Ahmed Al-Hawash, working in Cairo's Tawfeek Souq in the early 1970s, with the dish taking his name. The source hedges this as legend and that is the right level of confidence, it is widely repeated, plausible given how recent it is, and not documented in a way that settles it. What makes it work is the raw filling. The meat goes into the bread uncooked, and the fat renders as it bakes, soaking into the pita from the inside while the outside crisps in the oven. Cooking the meat first would lose that entirely and give you a dry sandwich. The wet-vegetable problem is the one thing to get right, and the source handles it well: the onion, pepper, jalapeño and parsley are processed and then drained in a sieve before they go near the meat. Skipping that step floods the bread. Related dishes exist across the region, Lebanese arayes is the same idea with different spicing.
AFN Heritage Note
Hawawshi is an Egyptian street food of pita bread stuffed with spiced minced beef and baked. It is sold across Cairo and Alexandria, where it is also called baladi, and is commonly credited to a Cairo butcher, Ahmed Al-Hawash, in the early 1970s. The Lebanese dish arayes is closely related.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Set the oven to 400°F / 200°C.
- 2
Combine the coriander, allspice, paprika, black pepper, cardamom, cumin and cinnamon in a small bowl.
- 3
Put the onion, garlic, bell pepper, jalapeño and parsley into a food processor and pulse a few times until finely chopped. Tip the mixture into a sieve and press it with the back of a spoon to drain the liquid, this step is what keeps the bread from going soggy.
- 4
Transfer the drained vegetables to a large bowl with the ground beef and tomato paste and mix to combine.
- 5
Mix in the spice blend and a good pinch of kosher salt, working it through until the spices are evenly distributed.
- 6
Cut the pita loaves in half to make 12 pockets.
- 7
Brush a large baking sheet with olive oil.
- 8
Stuff each pocket with about a third of a cup of the raw meat mixture, spreading it inside with the back of a spoon so it fills the pocket evenly.
- 9
Arrange the pitas on the sheet and brush the tops with olive oil.
- 10
Bake for 15 minutes, then turn them over carefully and bake for a further 5 to 10 minutes, until the meat is cooked through and the bread is crisp on both sides.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Nympha Nzeribe- Drain the vegetables properly. Wet filling floods the pita from the inside and no amount of baking recovers it.
- Put the meat in raw. The fat rendering into the bread as it bakes is the entire point, and pre-cooked meat gives you a dry sandwich.
- Spread the filling thinly and evenly inside the pocket. A thick lump in the middle stays raw while the edges burn.
- Turn them halfway. Both sides need to crisp, and the underside sits against the tray.
- Use pita with a proper pocket. Pocketless flatbread will not work for this.
- Check the meat is cooked through before serving, the bread crisps before thick filling is done.
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