Menting meat cake or door nail meat cake is a traditional snack in Beijing. It is named because it is shaped like the door nail on the city gate in ancient times. And it is said that door nail meat cake has auspicious meaning.
It is said that during the Qing Dynasty, the imperial kitchen of the palace made a stuffed snack for the special occasion of Empress Dowager Cixi, who liked it very much and asked for the name of this kind of food. The chef temporarily thought of the palace gate on the doornails, and replied that it is called the doornail meat pie.
The doornail meat pie practice and the general pie are similar, but the pie is flat, while the doornail meat pie is about 3 centimeters high and 5 centimeters in diameter cylinder. The filling is traditionally beef and scallion. Door nail meat pie selection of beef brain and tender fat and thin parts chopped into a filling, seasoned with sesame oil, onions, fresh ginger, pepper and other auxiliary materials mixed with fine white flour and into a soft crust, wrapped in the shape of a doornail on the red door like the palace, 4 cm in diameter, 2 cm thick, placed in the pan-fried and cooked, can be regarded as a kind of thin skin filling a gourmet food. It’s burnt on the outside and tender on the inside, fragrant and moist in the mouth, and the fresh soup overflows when you bite into it, which makes it unique in flavor.
Phoenix Lee https://chinese-tradition.com/beijing-menting-meat-cake.html