Or a Rou Jia Mo. Or a Chinese pulled pork sandwich. Whatever you choose to call it, I can guarantee your comfort food repertoire will never be quite the same again.
My first encounter with the bread part of this sandwich was last year, right around the time it got cold, and I was temporarily sick of baozi, a steamed bun filled with pork, beef, cabbage, or mushrooms. Right across the street of the school I work at, there is a cute little husband-wife team that wheel out their cart to the same street corner every morning. They stay there all day long, and you can find them rolling out dough periodically throughout the day. They don’t make Chinese hamburgers, but rather gou kui, flatbreads filled with sweet or savory fillings. The fillings are rolled into the bread, so it’s really easy to eat on the go. One is stuffed with dark brown sugar and baked in a big wok, sort of like an English muffin. The other is filled with minced sausage (or lamb) meat and fried, a bit like a scallion pancake.
We then found the woman that wheels around the same kind of bread with NO filling right about the time we pick our son up from kindergarten. We often use them for toast in the morning because like I said, you end up with a flat bread that’s reminiscent of an English muffin.
And then, as if I needed any more convincing, I was starving one day when I got on the subway and stopped off to buy one of these flatbreads…stuffed with the Chinese version of pulled pork.
That was it. The search was on.
It turns out gou kui dough is pretty much like a yeasted tortilla dough. 2 parts flour, 1 part water, a little salt, and some yeast. I’d have said English muffin, but there are SO many recipes for English muffins out there, that depending on the recipe you use, it might not be the same at all.
Once you have the bread part down, you can go wild with some of the variations I mentioned above. In fact, check back in with me over the next week to get the recipe for the ones with fillings.
If you Google this flatbread in Chinese, you will find tons of step-by-step tutorials. Some people like to coil and roll, but unless I’m doing my sausage version, I prefer to simply roll it into a ball and flatten it. It’s the closest to what I get from my two gou kui vendors.
I make my flatbread in a wok over low heat and can cook up to three at a time. Since the wok heats up fast, I’ve found the easiest way to get lovely browned spots across the tops of my bread, without burning it, is to finish them off in the oven at 150C for 10 minutes.
The filling for the Rou Jia Mo sandwich is not for the lighthearted. It involves braising the pork belly in tons of Chinese spices for at least 2 hours. I’ve made this meat before in my rice cooker, which has a 2-hour soup setting. I’m assuming the same could be done with a crockpot (although I haven’t tried it yet). The liquid doesn’t thicken up into a glaze or anything, so you don’t even have to worry about decreasing the water in this recipe if you choose to try out the crock pot idea.
Don’t let the long ingredients of spices scare you. There are only 3 or 4 ingredients you may have never heard of before.
From top left: fructus amomi, cassia root, and sand ginger
You could probably get away with using the ingredients you might already have on hand: ginger, cloves, star anise, cinnamon (cassia root is the most authentic), and cumin. Other traditional seasonings I haven’t listed in this recipe? Tangerine peel, which could be replaced using orange zest, and licorice, which I haven’t found in my local market. You might find some of these ingredients if you’re close enough to wander around a Chinese supermarket for the afternoon. If all else fails, the one great thing about the world we live in today is that you can find just about anything online.
The pork belly sandwich you’ll find in its most basic version will have braised pork belly, diced up so the fat gets mixed in with the meat, green chili, and cilantro.
I like to serve these with lettuce, cucumber, cilantro, and diced jalapeno.
If I were being true to the experiences I’d had, I’d keep it limited to cilantro and diced jalapeno. But, here’s where I part ways with tradition: flavor. And even though I usually refrain from calling this a burger (it really isn’t), here’s the thing: my burgers need the freshness that the lettuce and tomato bring. My rou jia mo needs lettuce and cucumber.
I’m not sure why I’ve heard this translated so many times as a Chinese hamburger. It really reminds me more of a pulled pork sandwich, but get this going for Sunday dinner this week, and then tell me it really matters what we call this lovely specimen of a sandwich…just so long as we’re calling it ours.
Note: the bread recipe will make 12. I doubled my usual recipe to have enough to feed a large, hungry group. I figure that if we’re going to cook something for 2 hours, we might as well have leftovers! If you don’t finish all of them, they keep well stored in the freezer and toasted in the oven to reheat.
How To Make a Chinese Hamburger (aka Rou Jia Mo)
Print
Prep time
35 mins
Cook time
2 hours
Total time
2 hours 35 mins
This sandwich is a typical Chinese street food that could be a distant relative of an American pulled pork sandwich. Made with homemade gou kui flatbread and pork belly that has been braised in an exotic medly of spices, including cassia root, ginger, anise seed, cloves, and cumin and is served with a healthy dose of chili pepper and cilantro.
Author: Curried Cantaloupe
Recipe type: Sandwich
Cuisine: Asian
Serves: 10-12
Ingredients
FOR THE BREAD (MO, GOU KUI):
1.6 pounds (26 ounces) all-purpose flour
18 fluid ounces water
2 tablespoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 large mixing bowls
FOR THE BRAISED PORK:
2 pounds pork belly
enough water to cover the pork to rid of impurities
2 quarts water (8 cups) to braise (+ more as needed, I didn't...)
1 inch piece of ginger, sliced
3 pieces of cassia root (mine were about 3 inches long and rather thin)
1 tablespoon sand ginger (in slices)
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
2 stars of anise seed
2 fructus amomi pods
2 teaspoons ground cumin (you can use fresh cumin if you have)
1-2 teaspoons Sichuan Peppercorn
3 whole arbol chilies, dried
5 ounces rock sugar (possible substitutions: granulated sugar, honey, or even brown sugar)
1 teaspoon whole cloves
⅓ cup dark soy sauce
⅓ cup light soy sauce
FOR THE SANDWICHES:
1 bunch of cilantro
2 jalapenos (or other green, spicy chili pepper)
1 English cucumber, julienned
Instructions
TO MAKE THE BREAD:
Measure the flour and put it into one of the mixing bowls. Then measure out the water and spoon approximately one cup of the flour into the water, whisking it and sprinkling in the yeast to form a sponge. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
Then gradually add the rest of the flour mixture until it you have a sticky dough. Generously flour your work surface, turn out, and knead until the dough is smooth. Add more flour to your work surface as needed.
Once you have a smooth dough, roll it into a ball with your hands and let it rest for 30 minutes. (During this time you can start the pork belly if you want to make sandwiches.)
Come back to it and punch it down. Divide it into balls that are approximately 3.5 ounces, or 6 equal pieces.
Generously flour your work station and line one side of the table with some parchment paper, lightly dusted with flour.
Roll out your balls so they’re about ¼ “ thick and place them on the parchement to rest.
Preheat your oven to 300F (150C).
By the time you roll out your last ball of dough, you should be able to turn your wok on low to medium (I have a gas burner and it gets pretty hot, so I start on medium and lower it pretty quickly) and start cooking the flatbread rounds, starting with the round that has been resting the longest.
Cook it on each side for approximately 3 minutes. Each side should get a brown bubble pockets and lines that form around the bread. It should puff up slightly. Then place on a baking sheet.
When you have cooked the 12 pieces of bread in the wok, place them in the oven for 10-12 minutes to finish cooking right before you want to serve.
FOR THE PORK BELLY:
Start by boiling your pork belly for 15 minutes in a large pot of water to rid it of its impurities.
Then drain off the water (don’t keep it). Cut your pork into smaller, more manageable chunks. Add it to the pot of water and add in the soy sauces, sugar, and all of the spices.
Bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat so you can let it simmer for at least 2 hours.
TO ASSEMBLE THE SANDWICH:
Take your break and cut it down the middle, stopping about ⅔ of the way down.
Take spoonfuls of the meat and place it on a cutting board. Mince it and then spoon it into the flatbread.
Mince the jalapeno, julienne the cucumbers, and chop the cilantro. Add as much as you want to your sandwich.
Serve warm.
3.2.2885