Walking the streets of any Egyptian city you can see lots of small stands, booths & street food stalls. These places do not always look inviting, but to get to know the real flavors of a given country you have to try the street food. Foods that locals eat, from places that are not specially prepared for the tastes of foreigners. In these places you will find the best hawashi regardless of which city in Egypt you visit.
Hawawshi is a traditional Egyptian sandwich made of flat local bread (balady) filled with spiced mince beef mixed with onions, pepper, parsley and sometimes hot peppers and chillies.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
- 400 grams minced beef
- 2 small green peppers
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- 2 small tomatoes
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 small red onions
- spices: salt, pepper, cumin, hot pepper, coriander, nutmeg
- 8 pieces of Egyptian bread (aish baladi)
There is no such bread outside of Egypt, so if you plan to make hawawshi take some bread with you from Egypt and freeze it.
- olive oil
Preparation
- Put the minced meat, tomatoes, onions and peppers, cut into small cubes and garlic squeezed through the press into the bowl. Then add the spices: 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of hot pepper, 1 teaspoon of cumin, a pinch of nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon of coriander.
- Mix all ingredients very thoroughly and knead for some time to make the meat stick with the other ingredients.
- Then cover with cling film and put in the fridge for at least an hour.
- Put aluminum foil on the metal sheet and leave a piece of the same size to cover the finished hawawshi. The bottom layer of foil should be then smeared with olive oil.
- Prepare Egyptian bread. If you have frozen, you must defrost it first. Each side of the bread is gently torn apart to create a hole for the meat stuffing.
- Put the meat stuffing into each bread with a spoon and crush it so that there are flat patties as seen in the picture. Put the bread prepared in this way onto previously prepared foil in a baking tray.
- Lubricate each piece of bread with olive oil.
- Close the foil and put in the oven preheated to 190 degrees. Bake for about 35 minutes (or until the meat is cooked), then uncover the top layer of foil and bake for another 10 minutes, so that the upper part of the bread turns brown.
- After baking, remove from the oven and put on a board, cut into 4 parts.
We put on a plate, add our favorite additions such as marinated vegetables, fries or tahina sauce and READY !!!
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