Arayes b'Saj (عرايس بالصاج) is the grilled meat-stuffed pita cooked on a saj, the convex metal griddle heated from below, and the angle is the cooking surface and what it does to the bread. A saj produces a thin, fast-cooked flatbread with a dry, slightly blistered surface rather than the puffed pocket of an oven pita, so this form of arayes tends to be flatter, crisper, and more shatteringly thin than its grill-cooked relatives. The dome conducts a fierce, even heat across a wide area, which suits the central problem of arayes: getting the bread to crisp and the fat to render before the meat overcooks or the shell burns.
The filling is the familiar one, a kafta-style mixture of ground meat, grated onion, parsley, and warm spice spread thin, but the geometry is dictated by the saj. Saj bread is large and thin, so the meat is spread over a sheet and the bread folded over it, or two layers sandwiched, then laid across the convex surface and turned as it cooks. The dryness of the saj works for and against the cook: it crisps the exterior beautifully but gives up little steam, so the meat layer has to be thin and the fat content judged carefully or the inside dries out before the outside is ready. The onion grated rather than chopped is doing real work here, melting in to keep the interior moist against a cooking method that wants to drive moisture off. A good arayes b'saj is thin, bronzed, and crackling, with a cooked but still juicy seam of meat. A weak one is either scorched and dry from too long on the dome or pale and underdone from being pulled too soon.
It is cut into pieces and served the usual way, with lemon, tomato, onion, and often a tahini or toum sauce to carry the dryness. Within the arayes family this is the form defined by method rather than filling, which means it overlaps with the others: a saj kitchen can run the same kafta, spiced meat, preserved lamb, sausage, or cheese fillings across the dome, each a recognizable variant worth its own treatment. The saj is a fixture of Lebanese street and village cooking, used for manoushe and wraps as much as for this, so arayes b'saj is essentially the arayes idea handed to the country's most characteristic flatbread griddle and coming back thinner and crisper for it.