We propose a more conservative, physically-intuitive criterion, namely, the boundary enstrophy flux (
$BEF$
), to characterise leading-edge-type dynamic stall onset in incompressible flows. Our results are based on wall-resolved large-eddy simulations of pitching aerofoils, with fine spatial and temporal resolution around stall onset. We observe that
$|BEF|$
reaches a maximum within the stall onset regime identified. By decomposing the contribution to
$BEF$
from the flow field, we find that the dominant contribution arises from the laminar leading edge region, due to the combined effect of large clockwise vorticity and favourable pressure gradient. A relatively small contribution originates from the transitional/turbulent laminar separation bubble (LSB) region, due to LSB-induced counter-clockwise vorticity and adverse pressure gradient. This results in
$BEF$
being nearly independent of the integration length as long as the region very close to the leading edge is included. This characteristic of
$BEF$
yields a major advantage in that the effect of partial or complete inclusion of the noisy LSB region can be filtered out, without changing the
$BEF$
peak location in time significantly. Next, we analytically relate
$BEF$
to the net wall shear and show that its critical value (
$=\max (|BEF|)$
) corresponds to the instant of maximum net shear prevailing at the wall. Finally, we have also compared
$BEF$
with the leading edge suction parameter (
$LESP$
) (Ramesh et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 751, 2014, pp. 500–538) and find that the former reaches its maximum value between
$0.3^{\circ }$
and
$0.8^{\circ }$
of rotation earlier.