Bierrocks

I really need to get better at taking pictures of what I make at home. If I took pictures of every meal I made, I'd have an endless supply of posts. Maybe if I take a picture of these beautiful bierrocks next time, I can post it at the top of this currently pictureless post and you can go, "Oh my, those look tasty. I must make them now." But for now, you must simply take my word for it that these things are yummy. I make my own dough for these, but by all means, feel free to use frozen dinner roll dough. The operative word here being dough, as in uncooked. I made the mistake of not carefully reading the label of frozen dinner rolls and ended up purchasing the "heat and eat" variety instead of the uncooked stuff. I've also made these with crescent rolls from the tube. If you do that, use two triangles and pinch together the perforated parts. (It just now struck me that perforated bread dough is very strange.)

Bierrocks

Ingredients:
for the dough
2 c flour
1 tsp instant yeast (approx half a packet)
2 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2 c milk
2 T butter
1 egg, beaten

for the filling
1/2 lb ground beef
1/4 to 1/2 of a head of green cabbage, shredded
1/2 of an onion, chopped
salt and pepper, to taste
cheddar cheese, to taste, optional

Method:
1) Melt the butter in the microwave, then add sugar, salt, milk, and the egg. Whisk to combine. Heat the milk mixture until warm, not hot. Water over about 120 degrees will kill the yeast.
2) Add the ingredients to a large bowl (preferably the work bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment on it) in this order: 1 c of flour, yeast, milk mixture, 1 c of flour. Stir with the paddle of your mixer or a hefty spoon until it forms a ball. If it will not form a ball, add more flour.
3) If you have a dough hook for your stand mixer, spray it with non-stick spray and run it on your mixer on a slow setting for about 10-15 minutes. If you do not have a mixer, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it. (Stretch it out by pushing it against the surface, fold, turn, repeat.) At the end of either method, you should be able to stretch a small piece of dough until you can see light through it. This means you have developed enough gluten to make the dough strong and elastic, which will give you a nice chewy texture.
4) Put a little bit of oil in a large bowl and toss your ball of dough in it. Leaving the dough in the bowl, cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size - about an hour.
5) If you started with ready-made dough, start here. While your dough is rising, brown the ground beef over medium-high heat. Once there is no pink left in the beef, add the shredded cabbage, onion, and salt and pepper. Stir to combine. At this point, you can deglaze the pan if you want. Turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The cabbage should be completely wilted and the onions soft.
6) Once you reach this point, you can stir in the cheddar and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
7) Cut the dough into 12 equal pieces, and flatten the pieces into squares that are about 3"x3".
8) Place a tablespoon of filling in the center of each square of dough. Gather up the corners of the square and pinch the dough together to seal.
9) Place the roll, seal side down, in the cup of a standard-sized muffin tin. There is no need to grease it.
10) Once the muffin tin is full of rolls, place the tin in the oven and bake (at 375) for 15-20 minutes. The rolls should be golden brown on top and should spring back when you poke them.


-Katy