How to Make Beijing-Style Spring Rolls (Chun Bing) - A Complete Chinese Pancake Meal

We all know spring rolls - they might be one of the most common and loved Chinese foods outside China. At my local Chinese takeaway in the UK, I could buy a huge, greasy, soda-can-sized roll, deep-fried and packed with bean sprouts, char siu pork and shrimp. At the supermarket, I often bought mini spring rolls as a side dish, popped them into the oven for 15 minutes, and in every TV show set in New York, someone is eating egg rolls at some point.

Spring rolls have travelled a long way from their origins. Beijing is the home of spring rolls, or chun bing, as they’re known locally in Mandarin, and they’re quite different from what I knew as a spring roll. In Beijing, chun bing are large, thin, soft wheat pancakes, similar to tortillas, served at the table alongside a plethora of stuffings. A stack of fresh pancakes arrives, usually kept warm in a little candle-lit heater. Once the stuffings arrive, perhaps three or four for two people, you build your own, picking and choosing what goes inside, almost like putting together a burrito.

There is no deep-frying in sight.

Beijing has hundreds of chun bing restaurants, and they’re a familiar sight on the home table too. There must be thousands of pancakes rolled, stuffed and eaten in the capital every day.

What’s the story?

Chun bing literally means spring pancake, because they were traditionally made during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). They were seen as a dish to greet the new season, pray for a bountiful year and put the cold winter behind you. Thousands of years ago, it was customary to “bite spring”, which meant eating spicy or pungent foods to help the body adjust to the changing season. Over time, this practice became simply eating chun bing. Perhaps it’s their simplicity, but spring rolls have spread far and wide: almost every Asian (and Western) culture with some Chinese influence has a version of chun bing that originally came from Chinese migrants.

How are they made?

They are made from a simple dough - flour, water and salt - that’s kneaded, rested and rolled into small, flat rounds about the width of a coaster. Each one is then smeared with oil and stuck together in pairs. You then roll them as flat as possible, to around the size of a large dinner plate, and steam them in piles. In restaurants, they are often cooked on a flat, round griddle known as an aozi (鏊子), identical to a crêpe griddle. Once ready, they are served. Guests then pick up a pancake and “peel” it into two.

What to Cook with Chun Bing?

The combinations of stuffings for chun bing are almost endless - scrambled egg, stir-fried veg, vermicelli noodles with spinach, bean sprouts, slow-cooked pork, sliced beef or marinated fish.

Below you’ll find everything you need to make your first chun bing meal: the recipe for the pancakes as well as a few options for the stuffings depending on your mood.

You’ll usually need around 1 more dish than you have guests. So if it’s just the two of you, make three dishes, if you’ve got four people, cook five dishes. Most guests will eat around 3-4 pancakes in a meal, I might manage 5 (or 6), if I’m feeling particularly greedy.