Bierocks or Runzas: Meat Stuffed Bread

I was thumbing through old magazines as I was decluttering and came upon an Old Cooking Light magazine that had a section on Mennonite recipes. I’ve never eaten these bierocks anywhere else, but the recipe reminded me of the piroshkis we used to pick up sometimes for dinner in Sonoma, where I grew up.  These were a bit different somehow in flavor, and also that my dough here was thicker and there less filling.  They are good though and made a nice easy lunch to pack for my daughter, when combined with some fruit.

First start the dough:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, beaten lightly
• 4 cups flour

The recipe called for bread flour but I just used regular unbleached flour and increased the yeast by 1/4 tsp. Seemed to work great.

Whisk together the sugar, yeast and water. Let sit for 5 minutes to “proof” (meaning to check and make sure your yeast is active before you waste any more ingredients!)  (I keep my yeast in the freezer and just keep a small jar in the frig that I replenish from the freezer periodically. This greatly extends the life. And the price of a seemingly endless bag of yeast at the big box store versus buying individual packets makes it well worth trying! If you have a friend to split the bag with, even better!)  The yeast, sugar and water should start to bubble just a bit.

Stir in the milk, oil, 1/4 tsp salt and eggs. I use my KitchenAid mixer with a bread hook to mix up bread so I proofed everything in the mixing bowl, then added the other ingredients.  Put about 3 cups of the flour into the bowl and turn the mixer on to a low setting. (High settings cause lots of flour to explode all over your counters!)  Let the mixer incorporate most of the ingredients together then add the last cup of flour, about 1/4 cup at a time until it pulls away and makes a nice elastic-looking ball. Keep the mixer on for 5 more minutes or so. (You can of course do this by hand.)

Now you want to let the dough rise for about an hour. If your house is warm, you can do this on the counter. If your house is a bit cool, turn your oven onto warm for a few minutes, then turn it off.  Rub a bit of oil in the bottom of a bowl and turn the dough into that bowl, flipping it around and turning it so that all sides are coated very lightly with oil. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

In the meantime, make the filling.

• 1 tsp oil
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/2 pound ground beef or turkey
• 2 cups thinly sliced cabbage
• salt and pepper to taste (1/4 tsp each does it for us)

In a skillet, heat the oil then add the onion and ground meat. Cook,stirring, until the onion is softened and the meat is no longer pink.  Add the cabbage and cook a few more minutes until the cabbage wilts. Salt and pepper the meat mix and set aside to cool, covered.

When the dough has been rising an hour or so, check that it is ready by poking two fingers into it. If the indentations from your fingers remain in the dough, it’s ready!  Punch the dough down, cover and let rest 5 minutes. Meanwhile, cover a cutting board or counter with a light dusting of flour.

Divide the dough in half and roll one half into a roughly 10 x 7 inch rectangle. Cut this into six squares and place about 1/4 cup of the meat and cabbage mix into the middle of each square. Pull two opposite corners together and pinch together, then do the same with the other two corners. Place seam side down onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 375 while you cover the bierocks again and let rise about 20 minutes.

Uncover and bake about 15 minutes. Cool a bit  on wire racks then serve.   Goes great with soup!

Folding the dough over the meat

If you want to freeze them, let them cool completely and wrap each bierock individually in foil, then drop them all into a freezer bag.

Bierock

Barbecued Burgers

The hamburger recipe from Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals is actually pretty darn close to my mom’s old recipe. He uses cream crackers crumbled up instead of bread crumbs and leaves out the Worcestershire, ketchup and horseradish.  I have currently settled on using the crackers, which do seem to provide a nice flavor, but adding the Worcestershire, because everything is better with Worcestershire I think.   But that’ s partly because I had some cream crackers left over from the holidays, which were starting to go stale.  Now that I’ve made these burgers twice in two weeks I’m out of crackers!

• 12 cream crackers, crumbed (or 1 cup bread crumbs or other cracker crumbs)
• 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley (he says 8 sprigs,  I just chop from the ends)
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all this up together, then form into 6 patties. (Yep, I think we don’t all need a 1/4 pound of beef in a burger! Stretch them out thin so they cover the bun and everyone will be happy.)   Pour a bit of olive oil onto them, then refrigerate a bit to firm them up before grilling.  You can cook on an indoor grill or outdoor grill or a good skillet, about 4 minutes per side.

Serve with the condiments of your choice. Ours vary depending on what we have around but might include:

• cooked bacon slices
• sliced avocado
• lettuce
• sliced onion or sauteed onion
• sliced pickles
• ketchup
• cheese

If we use cheese, I like to add it to the burger the last minute of cooking so it melts good. I also pop the split buns on the barbecue to toast them up a bit.  I’ve also found that our grocery store bakery’s Kaiser rolls cost about the same as a pack of really plain white hamburger buns and are much better tasting. Or if you’re feeling up to it, you can bake your own hamburger buns which are to die for!

I find it easy to stick stuff INTO the freezer sometimes and harder to remember to use it up, so since it’s just me tonight this is perfect!

And this time I have some tortilla chips to go with it!  I also have a bit of avocado left so am adding that once the soup warms up. If avocado goes great with chicken tortilla soup, I’m thinking it will add a nice cool bit to taco soup too.

You could of course mix this into a loaf and bake it that way for about an hour, or form into muffin tin loaves and bake half an hour or so, but the fastest way to cook them up will be forming into patties and cooking in a skillet on the stove.  In the picture above, I have one packed for my daughter’s lunch tomorrow with some of the leftover cheesy mashed potatoes.

• 1 pound of ground beef or turkey (I actually just used 3/4 pound)
• 1/2 cup or so diced onion
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs *
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh parsley and a bit of dried
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• ketchup or tomato sauce as needed

Mix everything but the ketchup together in a mixing bowl. Using your hands is best so you won’t overmix but you can also use a mixer if you don’t like touching the meat.

Form into 6 patties, no more than 1″ thick.

Cook in a medium hot skillet about 4-5 minutes per side, until cooked through. Put some ketchup or tomato sauce on top of each patty, cover the skillet and cook 1-2 minutes until the ketchup is heated through.

These were very moist and tasty. I really liked the flavor and having meatloaf taste on the table in 20 minutes or less is pretty fantastic.

* NOTE: Whenever I have leftover bread about to go stale (or already stale!) I grind it up into bread crumbs, bake them in a low oven on a cookie sheet until dried and store them in the freezer.

I was so excited to receive a copy of this cookbook to review: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare

I’ve been following Erin Chase’s blog 5 Dollar Dinners for some time. I track my overall food budget, and used to track it even more carefully than I do today. That’s why I started CheapCooking.com. But I love the idea of setting a “do not exceed goal” for dinner, the highest cost meal for most of us.   She set that price based on what she felt were reasonable goals for a healthy dinner for her family of four where she lives, basically $1.25 per person for dinner, and her overall goal of less than $300/month for her family of 4.

Obviously, your own goals may vary, depending on where you live and how many you are feeding. But the idea of setting a goal for dinner is a great one, as I think most of us spend more on dinner than other meals. And having an overall monthly target lets you vary a bit week to week, as special occasions arise. Certain months you may stock up a bit more based on sales and other months, hopefully, come in a bit under.

Living in the San Francisco bay area, I find myself drooling over her sale prices. But don’t let your own circumstances derail the idea. Track your prices. Stock up on sale prices.  Use coupons where they make sense. Have a great repertoire of recipes that you can use for healthy balanced meals.  Where I live, there are no stores that double coupons, for example, but I bet you can cut your grocery bills substantially by following her guidelines, even without using coupons, and you will find some great recipes to add to your regular favorites.

Just the day after I received this book to review (meaning I didn’t pay for it, but that did NOT influence my review here, I would have bought it regardless so was thrilled to get a review copy! And if I get a review copy of a book I don’t like, I generally just don’t review it…), my youngest asked for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  We had two extras for dinner that night if I recall, and I still ended up with leftovers.

I had everything I needed in my freezer and pantry. I have a great meatball recipe handed down from my Italian ex-MIL but opted to follow Chase’s recipe so I could do a good review. The major differences would be fresh garlic over garlic powder  (I grow my own garlic so count it as nearly free at this point since you replant it every year but did cook this up with garlic powder just to test the recipe) and if I want to splurge I use a mix of ground pork, ground veal and ground beef. You can sometimes find this at reasonable prices but I use pure ground beef when I cannot and used that the night I made these.) I think the key is good Parmesan, which is cheap on a per serving basis since you need very little for maximum flavor.

I also make my own breadcrumbs whenever we have bread going stale, so always have a stash in the freezer.

Italian Meatballs

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning (or use some basil and oregano)
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (splurge here I say!)
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs olive oil

Mix all the ingredients together and form into 1 inch balls. You can use a small cookie scoop if you prefer but I find the meatballs stay together better if you “pack” them a bit with your hands. I use my KitchenAid 5-qt. Stand Mixer to mix stuff like this. but then form the balls with my hands.

Preheat the oven to 350 while you’re forming the meatballs (and perhaps making the sauce!).

Heat a skillet with 2 Tbs olive oil and brown the meatballs over medium heat, turning periodically to brown evenly for a few minutes. Then put the meatballs in a lightly greased baking dish and bake at 350 for 15-20  minutes.

Serve with your favorite spaghetti or marina sauce (see below) and 1 pound cooked spaghetti. This will serve far more than 4 in my house, but we love leftover spaghetti and meatballs for lunches or leftover spaghetti and sauce in meatball sandwiches as well.  (Just toast some bread or rolls, preferably with some garlic and butter, then load up some meatballs and sauce, top with some provolone or mozzarella cheese and broil a few minutes.)

Marinara Sauce

• 1 28-ounce can of crushed or pureed tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbs dried basil
• 1 Tbs dried oregano
• 1 Tbs dried rosemary
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

I grow rosemary year round so used 1 tsp fresh chopped rosemary instead.

Combine everything and simmer at least 15 minutes, longer is good too. Just stir now and then and leave it at a very low simmer.

Store the sauce for a week in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer.

If you can grow any or all of the herbs and garlic that cuts the cost significantly and improves the flavor.

Review Recap

The girls love my normal meatballs and sauce recipe but declared this really good, as did our guests.  I do think meatballs are better with some ground pork and/or veal but that might knock it out of your budget. For pure ground beef, these are delicious! And I think if you had 1/3 each of ground beef, pork and veal, you’d have a killer recipe.

I  play around with marinara sauce so much I don’t know that I have a “normal” but this is a great one. You might think about adding some fennel if you’re into a stronger Italian flavor but that’ s purely a matter of what you’re used to.

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading recipes over the last 18 years of cooking and can say that most of these recipes read well, even if I haven’t cooked them all. Some are very similar to some of my old favorite recipes and others are new but sound great.

I served this meal with some garlic bread and a Caesar salad. I did use a store-bought dressing but made the croutons from a leftover hot dog bun (coat with some butter and sauteed in a bit of  butter with some herbs).

Updated to add: If you’d like a chance to win a copy of the cookbook, which just hit the stores today, post a comment. I’ll randomly draw a winner on December 29.

If you don’t win, you can buy this from Amazon by following this link: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare or look for it in your local bookstore or ask your library to buy a copy.

Tostada with Ground Beef and Fixings

My youngest has a new friend spending the night and asked for tostados for dinner, a perfect request since we had a perfect ripe avocado. I pulled some ground turkey from the freezer and cooked it up with some taco seasonings.  A while back I bought a container of taco seasoning but I actually prefer this recipe with onions and tomato sauce and cumin.  But sometimes you’re in a hurry and the mixes aren’t all that bad.   You could also make up your own taco seasoning packets if you’d like.

While the meat was cooking, I served up small dishes of grated cheese, sour cream, lettuce, sliced olives, diced avocados, diced tomatoes and got out some bottled green salsa and hot sauce.  I also heated up a can of refried beans.

Tostado Fixings

When the meat was done, I removed it to a serving dish and covered it to keep warm, rinsed out the cast iron skillet I was using, then put in a small amount of canola oil and fried up some corn tortillas for the base of the tostados.

Leftovers will make a great taco salad or soft tacos.

<edited later to add pictures!>

Meatball sandwich

In truth, there’s hardly a recipe for a meatball sandwich. At its simplest, you take a French or hoagie roll, put a few meatballs on it, ladle some spaghetti sauce on it and eat.

If you want to get a bit fancier, you’d use your own homemade meatballs. My favorite recipe uses ground pork and ground beef, plus cheese.  But if ground pork is hard to find or too expensive, just use all ground beef. These days I prefer to bake them rather than fry them. I make a lot, then flash freeze what i don’t need so I have a handy stash in the freezer.

The other night we had company and I went all out and made Sunday Gravy a la the Soprano’s. I made double the meatballs though and froze the extra sauce and meatballs, plus sent some sauce and sausage and meat home with a guest plus sent some over to the neighbor with a broken leg. The recipe makes a lot!

My youngest has been loving having spaghetti and meatballs for lunch every day this week, although she took a break today. Then she came home and asked if we could have meatball sandwiches for dinner! Ha!  Sure…

I put some meatballs and sauce on the stove to heat up, then took the French rolls and opened them up, spread with some butter, sprinkled with some garlic powder and broiled until crispy.   By then the meatballs and sauce were warmed through. I put 3 meatballs on each French roll, ladled some sauce on top, then put some grated Mozzarella over it and put the sandwiches back under the broiler for a bit.

Mmmm.  We broke with tradition and ate dinner while watching Glee on TV.  Served the sandwiches with a green salad and it was a lovely dinner.  What a great way to use up leftovers.

Stuffed Green Peppers and Mini Meatloaf

I got this recipe from my sister. Unlike most stuffed green pepper recipes, it has no rice. I personally think I would like this a bit better with some cooked rice added, but it was good. My daughter was aghast at the idea of eating astuffed  green pepper, so I used the same meat mix in a silicon muffin liner and made a mini meat loaf. I had just bought these Wilton Easy Flex Silicone Baking Cups and they worked great for muffins the other day and for a single meatloaf muffin tonight.

• 3 bells peppers, tops cut off and insides trimmed
• 1/2 pound ground beef
• 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 Tbs diced onion
• 1/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese for topping

Heat a quart or so of salted water in a pot until boiling. While the water heats, trim the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds and membranes. (Note, you can use red, orange, yellow or green peppers. The non-green ones will be a little sweeter.)

Simmer the peppers in the water 5 minutes and then drain.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Mix together the ground beef, tomato sauce, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and diced onion. (Note: Next time I may add a bit of Worcestershire sauce.)

Place the drained peppers in a shallow baking dish. Stuff them with the meat mixture. Cover and cook 45 minutes. Uncover, top with some grated cheese, and bake another 15 minutes.

• leftover taco meat
• homemade salsa if it’s summer or bottled if not
• chopped lettuce
• grated Cheddar cheese or a Mexican blend
• refried beans or black beans or whole pinto beans
• sliced olives if you’d like
• chopped avocado if you have some
• chopped fresh tomato
• chopped green onions or yellow onions
• tortilla chips or broke up leftover taco shells

If you’ve got a vegetarian in the family, this is a great dish because you can serve everything in small bowls and let everyone build their own taco salad, with or without meat.  You could also substitute leftover cooked chicken for the ground beef. It’s very flexible.

So tonight I thought I’d experiment with their Carolina Chili Dogs. These were very good and I think a nice option to add for a cookout when you’re doing burgers and dogs.  They suggested that Southeners preferred their chili finely ground. To get this texture, they suggested cooling the mixture 20 minutes or so and then using your blenders or food processor. I just pulled out my immersion blender (love that thing!) and it did the trick just perfectly!  I used a pound of ground beef rather than their 1.5 p0unds because that’s what I had. And I upped the Worcestershire from 2 tsp to 1 Tbs because (a) I’d just used the tablespoon and b) we like Worcestershire.

• 1 pound ground beef (extra lean)
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 cups water
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 Tbs chili powder
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp vinegar (cider or white)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Put the water and ground beef in a Dutch oven or soup pot over high heat and bring to a boil. Peel and chop the onion while waiting for this to boil.  Add the onion, reduce the heat to medium, and stir to break up the meat a bit.

Add the tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder, Worcestershire, vinegar, salt and pepper and stir until the tomato paste is dissolved and everything is mixed well, breaking up the meat chunks as you go.

Simmer over low heat about 15 minutes, until very thick, stirring now and then.

Serve on hot dogs with grated Cheddar cheese if you want chili cheese dogs. They didn’t suggest that so maybe it’s not a Carolina thing, but around here you get chili cheese dogs if you get chili on hot dogs.

NOTE: If you like boiling ground beef, I’d think you could reduce the water a bit and skip the blending because the ground beef will already be fairly fine.

You can definitely make the chili ahead of time and freeze in portions that your family will find useful. They suggest 2 Tbs per hot dog, so maybe 1/2 cup for a family of 4-5.