- This Egyptian girl is about to show you
how to Hawawshi.
Hawawshi is a super popular Egyptian sandwich
made with pita bread and the best beef mixture there is
with onions, peppers and a few warm spices.
Think of it as the Egyptian version
of a hamburger on steroids.
(pleasant music)
I'm Susie with the MediterraneanDish.com,
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Now let's make some Hawawshi.
Hawawshi. You gotta Hawawshi.
Now Hawawshi is a super popular Egyptian street food,
slash meal, that we make at home as well.
I'm gonna show you a big shortcut to it.
Typically they make a nice big dough
and then fill it with this beautiful beef mixture.
But I am going to use pita bread.
Before we get to mixing the meat,
We need to mix up our spices so that we can have
an even mixture going on here.
So are you ready for it?
One teaspoon of coriander,
one teaspoon all spice,
one teaspoon of paprika,
one teaspoon black pepper,
half a teaspoon of cumin.
Let's do three quarter teaspoon of cardamom
and finally a pinch of cinnamon.
We're gonna mix this party together.
And again, I do this so that I can have
even flavors throughout my mixture of meat.
The smell of this spice mixture takes me
straight to my Egyptian home.
It is so good.
The next thing we need to do adding on more flavor here
involves one onion.
We're gonna cut this up a minute.
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It doesn't matter how you cut it.
It's going in the food processor.
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Rather than chopping my onions and pepper super small,
I'm just gonna go ahead and use the food processor.
Shortcuts today. This Hawawshi is about shortcuts,
but it has all the beautiful, authentic flavors
you will eat in Egypt.
Now, there is a version of Hawawshi
that's from Cairo, Egypt.
There's one from Alexandria.
Let's call this the Mediterranean Dish version
of Hawawshi, (laughs) the Suzy version.
(food processor whirring)
Jalapeno, remove the seed if you don't want it to be so hot.
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And a good bunch of fresh parsley.
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(food processor whirring)
So two cloves of garlic go into
my parsley mixture right here.
(food processor whirring)
All right so either you chop using your knife
or you just use a food processor like I did,
but you have one onion, two garlics,
one bell pepper, one jalapeno,
and a bunch of parsley in this mixture right here.
Now it's got a little bit of liquid to it.
So what I'm going to go ahead and do
is drain this liquid in my sink.
Just gonna use something mesh like this
and kind of just squeeze out the extra liquid.
This is, especially from the onions.
All right so we're gonna go ahead
and put together our meat mixture for this Hawawshi party.
Take your mixture of onion, garlic, parsley, and peppers,
and combine it with the meat.
And then we have two to three tablespoons of tomato paste
for some good umami.
And at this point in time, I would like to give it
a little bit of a mix.
It helps to put a glove on.
Please work, please. I only have one glove.
Get in and mix everything well together.
All right, we're just breaking things up here.
We're about to put the spices in.
They'll have a better chance of infusing
the meat mixture right now.
So here we go.
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Smells amazing already.
A good dash of kosher salt.
So we're gonna mix this party up real, real good.
That's why I like a glove here.
Don't be shy with your Hawawshi meat.
By the way I hear, and I'm not sure how accurate this is,
but I hear that the original maker of Hawawshi
is a chef in Cairo, Egypt by the name of Ahmed al-Hawawsh.
And that's where, the name, the Hawawshi recipe
was kind of named after him.
Hawawshi party's about to go down, you guys.
It helps to warm up your pita on the stove top
or in the oven before you stuff it
with the Hawawshi mixture.
Alright we're gonna cut six pita loafs
into halves like this.
Now you've got yourself a nice pocket.
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Alright, open up your nice pita pocket, nice and big.
You're gonna, you're gonna do about a third a cup
per pita pocket.
So what I like to do is I like to actually use
a measuring cup, pack it up nicely like this
and put it in here
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and then come in with a spoon
and you're gonna want to spread it out
in the pita like that.
We're gonna bake this together, you guys
and it's gonna be so epic.
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Just a tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil
to brush on the top of our Hawawshi sandwiches.
This is gonna go in the oven at 400 degrees,
and it's gonna take, oh 15, 20 minutes.
You watch for the meat to fully cook and the pita to crisp
and turn it part way through because some of the meat juices
are gonna come out and you want the pita to
crisp up on both sides.
So you're gonna turn it over midway through cooking.
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♪ Ooh ooh ♪
Oh ho ho ho!
I wish you can smell this humble pita spice beef sandwich
from Egypt will surprise your taste buds
in the best way possible.
To serve Hawawshi, you guys,
you really don't need much at all.
Usually people just... it's street food. It's humble food.
So it is just eaten as you see it,
maybe with a few slices of tomatoes
or a Mediterranean salad, a drizzle of tahini.
So definitely check out my tahini sauce video.
Also a Mediterranean salad
would go perfectly well for sandwich night.
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And that's it.
Grab the recipe for Egyptian Hawawshi
on themediterraneandish.com.
I will see you later. Ciao.