Manapua is this great little bread bun with Char Su meat stuffed inside typically found in China Town or at every 7-11 in Hawaii! Although usually this is filled with pork, we used hamburger because that’s what we had on hand. It was just as good! Also, usually these are steamed so they turn out pure white, but we didn’t want to go through the trouble of steaming them, so we baked ours and they turned out great!
This is a picture of my 4 year old sons hand helping us pull off the perfect amount of dough for the rolls! He had a blast!
Here are the ingredients:
Dough
* 2 cups lukewarm water
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 3 packages dry yeast (not rapid yeast)
* 8 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 7 cups flour
Filling
* about 2 lbs of hamburger
* 2 pkgs of Char Su Powdered Mix (purchase at any grocery store down the
Asian Isle)
Dough: Mix dry ingredients together (including yeast). Add oil and water and mix well. Knead dough until smooth (about 10 minutes). Place in a large bowl; cover with a clean damp cloth and leave in a warm place to rise for about 2 hours.
Filling: Brown meat and add the Char Su mix with about 1/2 cup of water, just like taco seasoning. Break up the hamburger into small pea sided chunks.
Preheat oven to 350.
Assemble: Pull off about 2 or 3 tablespoons of dough, flatten into a disk with the middle thicker than the edges. Spoon about a teaspoon or more of filling (it depends on how much dough you have)
My kids are going to love these! Thanks!