Burek

Sarajevo's coiled meat pie, hand-stretched pastry rolled around minced beef and onion and baked in a spiral, served with kajmak and a glass of yoghurt

Origin: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

From the journey of Wheat.

In Bosnia, burek means one thing and the distinction is taken seriously: pastry rolled around minced meat and onion. The versions with cheese, spinach, or potato exist and are eaten constantly, but they are called sirnica, zeljanica, and krompiruša, and a Bosnian will correct you. Collectively they are pita. It is baked as a long rope of filled pastry coiled into a spiral in a round pan, so that every portion cut from it has both crisp outer pastry and soft interior. Sarajevo's buregdžinica shops bake it in wood-fired ovens or under a sač, a metal dome heaped with embers, and the city is generally accepted across the former Yugoslavia as the benchmark. The pastry is stretched rather than rolled. A ball of plain flour-and-water dough is rested, then pulled by hand across a large cloth-covered table until it is thin enough to read a newspaper through, a technique the Ottomans brought and that survives more vigorously here than in most of the region. The filling is deliberately plain: minced beef or lamb, a great deal of raw onion, salt, and pepper. No garlic, no herbs, no spice beyond pepper. The onion releases its water into the meat as it bakes and keeps the filling moist, which is the whole trick.

Ingredients

Pastry

500 g filo pastry sheets, the largest you can find
120 ml sunflower oil

Filling

600 g minced beef, or half beef and half lamb
3 large onions, very finely chopped
3 tbsp water, for the filling

Seasoning

1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

To finish

100 ml warm water mixed with 2 tbsp oil, for finishing

To serve

200 g kajmak or thick sour cream, to serve

Method

Mix the raw minced meat with the finely chopped onion, salt, pepper, and three tablespoons of water. Do not cook it.
Chop the onion as finely as you can manage. It should almost disappear into the meat.
Lay two filo sheets end to end on a work surface, overlapping slightly, and brush with oil.
Spoon a line of filling along one long edge, leaving a clear margin, and roll the pastry up into a long thin rope, not too tightly.
Oil a large round tin. Coil the first rope into a spiral in the centre and continue with the remaining pastry and filling, joining each new rope onto the end of the last.
Brush the whole surface generously with oil and bake at 200C (fan 180C, gas 6) for twenty-five minutes.
Take it out, sprinkle the warm water and oil mixture all over the top, and return it to the oven for a further fifteen to twenty minutes until deep golden.
Rest for ten minutes, then cut wedges from the spiral and serve with kajmak and a glass of drinking yoghurt.

Notes

Meat only. Cheese is sirnica, spinach is zeljanica, potato is krompiruša. Calling any of them burek in Bosnia will start a conversation. Hand-stretched jufka is the traditional pastry. Large filo sheets are the standard substitute; the small supermarket ones make the coiling fiddly. Kajmak is a clotted, lightly soured dairy cream sold in Balkan shops; thick sour cream or clotted cream with a pinch of salt approximates it.

The Gastrographer

Name: Burek
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ingredients: 500 g filo pastry sheets, the largest you can find; 120 ml sunflower oil; 600 g minced beef, or half beef and half lamb; 3 large onions, very finely chopped; 1.5 tsp salt; 1 tsp black pepper; 3 tbsp water, for the filling; 100 ml warm water mixed with 2 tbsp oil, for finishing; 200 g kajmak or thick sour cream, to serve

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control