Kraut Bierock

This is a long-time favorite family recipe from my maternal grandmother's family. My grandma is 100% german. She is the second-youngest of 12 children, the youngest children were born here in the U.S., but the rest of the bunch were all born in Germany before my great-grandparents moved the family to America. This is a dish that my grandma grew up eating and she and her sisters have all kept the recipe alive in their families to date. When my grandma pronounces the name of this dish, it sounds more like grau-be-duk... at least that's how it sounds to me. I never knew how to spell it until this past week! :)

We planted a bunch of cabbage in our garden this year just so we could make up some large batches of some family-favorite recipes. I had some of my family over last Friday to make up some traditional dishes - enough for everyone to take home and have fresh and for leftovers and enough to fill my freezer with some great meals for the winter! We just made the kraut bierock filling to freeze - I'll make the dough when it comes time to eat them. And I didn't take a picture of the filling - I totally forgot. If you don't want to make the dough, you could use the ready-made crescent roll dough from the store. I've done that before, actually, and it was pretty good. Anyway... on to the recipe.

Kraut Bierock

filling:
1 cup oil (I omitted all of this)
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 large sliced onions (I used about 1 1/2 huge onions)
3 pounds sliced cabbage

dough:
6-6 1/2 cups flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter
2 cups warm water
2 packages dry yeast

Dissolve the yeast in warm water. Pour yeast liquid into flour mixture (flour, sugar, salt). Knead until bowl is clean. Lastly, need in the butter for about 5 minutes. Place in a greased bowl. Let rise. Punch down once. Cover and let rise until doubled.

Combine the oil, beef, salt, and pepper in a large pan and cook until meat is done. Add onions and cabbage. Cover, cook about 30 minutes. Stir several times.

Divide dough into 2 parts. Roll out to about 1/4" thick. Cut into squares - 5"x5". Place filling in middle of each square. Draw up corners and seal seams by pinching together. Place on a cookie sheet, seam side down, let rise 20 minutes. Brush top with shortening. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

(You can adjust the amount of cabbage and onions to your liking. I put more cabbage and less onions usually. And don't forget the cabbage cooks down a lot, so keep that in mind when you're adding it raw.)

Sausage Smothered in Cabbage

Tonight I tried a new recipe for sausage smothered in cabbage from AllRecipes. This was very good and I'd make it again. I'm trying to decide what to grow in our garden next year and have been wanting to try out different dishes using cabbage to know if it'd be worth it to put in some cabbage plants. I think it'd be worth it to put in some plants, especially since cabbage keeps so well in cold storage, so we wouldn't necessarily have to eat a lot of cabbage dishes all at once.

Sausage Smothered in Cabbage

1 small head red cabbage, shredded (I used savoy cabbage and just chopped it)
1 apple, cored and diced (I didn't have an apple, so I just used about a quarter cup of applesauce instead)
3 teaspoons salt, divided (I only used 2 teaspoons, but next time would not put any in, or only a trace amount)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon butter
1 small onion, chopped (I used a shallot)
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon wine vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
1 pound kielbasa sausage, cut into 1 inch pieces

Place the cabbage in a large kettle, and add the diced apple, 2 teaspoons of the salt, lemon juice, and 1/2 cup water. Bring to a boil then simmer, covered, about 15 minutes stirring occasionally.

In hot butter, saute the onion until golden. Add the onion to the cabbage along with 1 teaspoon salt, pepper, vinegar and sausage. Cook, covered, 20 to 30 minutes, or until sausage is heated through.

Golabki a.k.a. Pigs in a Blanket

Yesterday we went over to my Aunt Jeri's house to participate in the annual tradition of making pigs/golabki (which is actually pronounced more like gwumpkees). Every year a bunch of my family get together the week of Thanksgiving and make up an enormous batch of these. My mom's dad is 100% Polish and this recipe is an old family recipe of his parents' families. We've always had pigs at Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas, too. Golabki are basically just stuffed cabbage rolls that are cooked for a long time - the longer the better... the more black the cabbage becomes (it doesn't taste burnt) the better they are. There are so many different variations in cabbage rolls and they're called different things depending on the culture. They're generally from the Slavic cultures. We generally just call these pigs in a blanket - and up until the time that I met Kevin I never knew the "american" version of pigs in a blanket (the hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls). To this day, I can't refer to those as pigs in a blanket... golabki will always be pigs in a blanket to me.

Golabki a.k.a. Pigs in a Blanket

6 pounds hamburger
2 1/2 pounds sausage
2 large onions, chopped
4 large cabbage
5 teaspoons sage
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 cup uncooked rice
bacon
ketchup

Begin by steaming the cabbage in large pots on the stovetop (core out the center and then plop the entire head into the pots to steam). Cook the rice as directed on the package - you can use minute rice or the long-cook stuff as long as you cook it first. In a very large pan (we use a huge roaster), mix together the hamburger, sausage, onion, sage, salt, pepper, and cooked rice (use your hands).

Once the cabbage has steamed, use tongs to peel each piece away from the head. We lay the cabbage leaves on cookie sheets.

Roll some of the meat mixture into each cabbage leaf, folding in the ends and place them seam side down into a large roaster coated with cooking spray. Make one layer across the bottom then top with bacon strips. Then layer more cabbage rolls, then more bacon, etc. Until your roaster is full. Squirt a lot of ketchup on top of the last layer of bacon and cabbage rolls. Put the lid on the roaster and bake them at 350 for at least 3 hours. The longer they cook, the better they get. These freeze well.