Burek (pronounced: burr-eck) is a similar meat-filled pastry except burek isn’t soaked in the yogurt sauce:
Both burek and buredzici are very popular in the Balkans, and Kemal, who’s from Bosnia-Herzegovina, translates both buredzici and burek as “meat pita” in English. He says that you can make the pita in the spiral shape or in the longer cylinder-shaped pieces. However you want to shape it is fine.
I can’t begin to tell you how delicious meat pita is, but I do know that once you try it, you’re going to want to have it again and again. It’s not at all hard to make, although I will admit that I don’t make meat pita. I hate touching raw meat, so when it comes to making anything that involves touching raw meat, Kemal will take care of the meat part while I assist with other parts of the preparation not involved with the meat. I do handle raw meat and seafood at work, but I don’t like that aspect of my job. Fortunately I only do food prep about one day a week a week now. Most of the time my job involves making sure that plates are perfect before they’re delivered to the guest. I also garnish the plates and do all the finishing touches. I can handle raw meat if I have to, but I just don’t care for it. 
Anyway, buredzici and burek are actually very easy to make and not too time-consuming if you “cheat” like we do and buy the filo dough already prepared. There’s nothing at all wrong with buying the filo dough from the frozen food section at the supermarket, but our days of doing that are almost over. I’ve been wanting to make my own filo dough for quite some time now, and I think the next time we make pita, I’m going to give it a try.
In the meantime, are you ready to give this recipe a try? I took some quick snapshots with my handy-dandy pocket camera so you could see how Kemal stuffs, rolls, and shapes the pita. The pictures aren’t very good but hopefully you’ll get the general idea. Alrighty then, let’s get started.
Meat Pita (Buredzici)
Ingredients
- 1 pkg. filo dough
- 1 1/2 lb. ground veal (you can use ground beef or ground buffalo if you prefer, but veal is our preference)
- 3 small onions, diced
- 1/3 cup mineral water (this is optional but Kemal likes to use it because it makes the meat “fluffier.”)
- 5 tbsp. olive oil
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 tbsp. sea salt
- 1 tbsp. pepper
- 1 tbsp. Hungarian sweet paprika
- 9 cloves garlic, diced (you can use less garlic if you don’t care for a strong garlic taste)
- 16 oz. goat yogurt (you can use cow or sheep yogurt if you prefer)
- 1 1/2 tbsp. parsley
Note: To make burek, you follow all the steps below for making buredzici except you don’t make the yogurt sauce with the garlic and parsley. Burek is served either cold or warm.
Instructions:
- Remove the filo dough from the freezer several hours before you’re ready to cook. Leave it on your counter top for about 30 minutes and then put it in the refrigerator to thaw out slowly.
- When you’re ready to cook, grease your baking pan with olive oil. (I used a 12 inch by 17 inch pan)
- Dice the garlic and onions.
- Beat the egg.
- Now you want to make the filling. In large mixing bowl, combine the raw meat, 2 tbsp. of diced garlic (set aside the rest of the garlic to use later), all the diced onion, the egg, 2 tbsp. olive oil, the sea salt, paprika,and pepper. It will be a very wet filling.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Remove the thawed out filo dough from the refrigerator, and after you unwrap it, roll it out on your counter top.
- Now that you have your filo dough rolled out on the counter, remove one sheet from the stack and put it in front of you.
- Now you’re going grab a handful of the raw meat filling and sprinkle it down the middle of the filo nearly all the way to the edges. How much you want to put on your filo sheet is up to you, but in general, it’s better if you don’t over-stuff it, so if you just use a handful, that should be fine. Of course my hands are twice as small as Kemal’s so I would have to use two handfuls. I took a quick snapshot so you could see about how much filling should go on the filo sheet for the buredzici:
- After you put the filling on the dough, roll part of the filo sheet upward so the meat is covered…like this:
- Now hold the bottom of the dough and roll upward as Kemal’s doing here:
- Keep rolling upward until you can’t roll any more. Your pita will look something like this:
How to make the spiral shaped pita instead of the cylinder shaped pita: If you want to make the spiral shaped pita like Kemal made with the burek, then you’ll need to place two pieces of filo dough side by side and overlapping. Then you put the meat filling on the dough. Here’s a picture so you can see how it looks:
Then just roll the dough upward like this:
and keep rolling until it’s done:
Then just shape it into a snake spiral as shown above when I posted a picture of the burek.
- Now that you have your pita rolled and shaped the way you want it, place the stuffed and rolled pita into the greased baking pan.
- Repeat the process, sprinkling the meat mixture on the remaining filo dough sheet and then roll them like you did the first one.
- When you’ve finished, generously brush the tops of all the filo dough with olive oil.
- Bake covered for about 30 minutes.
- Check the temperature of the meat with your cooking thermometer. You want the meat to be at least 150 degrees at this point before you uncover it.
- Then uncover and cook until the filo pastry is golden brown.
- Check the temperature of your meat again. The meat is done if it’s at least 165 degrees.
- If the meat is done, then you can remove the pita from the oven and let it cool.
Note: If the meat still hasn’t reached 165 degrees, mist the top of the filo dough with water. Use a spray bottle if you have one or if not, then sprinkle some drops of water on the top of the dough. Then cover the pita and cook it a little longer until it reaches 165 degrees.
- While the pita is cooling, you will make a yogurt sauce by mixing the yogurt, parsley, and the remainder of the diced garlic. Chill for about 30 minutes.
- After the pita has cooled, spread the yogurt sauce over all of the meat pita.
- The yogurt will soften the pita, and when you’re ready to serve it, just cut the pita and enjoy.You can eat the pita right away if you like, but it’s actually better if you let the pita chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 to 24 hours. Buredzici is served cold.
