Grandma Jenny's Runzas
What exactly is a runza anyways? It's a traditional German dish! They are basically german cabbage pockets. Filled with ground beef, cabbage, and sometimes sauerkraut. You can also fill them with mushrooms, swiss cheese, and ground beef to create a sort of Philly-cheese steak, german fusion. My midwest friends may know of the restaurant chain "Runza," who took this german classic and ran with it, creating a fast food joint that makes some pretty deliciously crazy versions of these cabbage pockets. I know them from my childhood. I grew up eating these when my mom was craving a nostalgic recipe. My Grandma made these for her and her siblings all the time on our family farm and they have always been loved in our family.
So, I called up my lovely German grandma yesterday for these cute traditional cabbage pocket recipes. One has a tangy sauerkraut base, a german staple, and the other has crunchy cabbage. They don't look the prettiest, but they taste amazing!
This is a more intimidating and challenging recipe. As you can probably work out from the pictures. I have made and had this german classic quite a few times, but I still struggle with making it look pretty and all stay together...but with practice I'm sure they will look better over the years of me serving up this one to friends and family.
Just don't get discouraged your runzas may turn out just like mine: a mess on the outside, but a culinary classic when it comes to taste.
German Cabbage Pockets
Runzas 3 ways: ✨
1. Cabbage onion ground beef loaf
2. sauerkraut ground beef loaf
3. Cabbage pocket asymmetrical “dumplings”
Difficulty:
Ingredients:
A base of bread dough, your choice of store bought, homemade, white, wheat etc.
1 lb ground beef
1/2 head of cabbage shredded (your choice of color, traditionally it is white cabbage)
2 cloves garlic minced
1 onion diced
1 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tbs Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste
1 egg (optional for egg wash)
Method:
1*In a large skillet fry the ground beef seasoning with salt, pepper, rosemary, Italian seasoning, and thyme for 3 mins.
2*Add the garlic and onions after 3 mins and cook the meat until almost brown, once almost brown add the cabbage.
3* Cook the filling until the shredded cabbage reduces even more in size and meat is cooked.
4* While the filling cools prepare your dough, you will want an amount of dough that you can roll out to 8 by 16 inches.
5* Roll the dough using a rolling pin and floured surface. If you are doing the loaf simply add the filling to the middle of the rolled out dough and fold it over on itself to seal.
6*Use water to seal where you crimp the edges. If you are doing the dumpling version you simply cut out 4 by 4 squares add filling to the middle and connect and seal the edges, folding them upward to seal.
7* Crack one egg in a bowl and brush this over your runza as an egg wash to help them brown in the oven.
8* Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and let the prepped runza rise on your counter while this happens.
9* Once your oven is preheated add your runza and bake for 20-25 minutes or until dough is cooked and a golden brown!
*10* For the sauerkraut version add 1 24 ounces can of sauerkraut to the meat mixture instead of the cabbage and repeat the steps above.
Et Voila
A Few Lil. Notes:
I only used purple cabbage because I had some laying around that I didn't use for another recipe. I had to get rid of it and decided it was the perfect excuse to revisit a nostalgic recipe of mine. It made my runza loaf have almost a Cheshire cat appearance, but it still tasted great! You can use purple too, but I recommend sticking with a green/white cabbage, just to keep it traditional.
I would love love love to see if you try out this recipe or any of my recipes. This one in particular, because it is my grandma's recipe and I come from a family that is German on both sides, so I grew up eating German cuisine like this all of the time. I just really want to see what others create out of this one, so tag your pictures under #EtVoilaTheLittleBlog if you end up giving it a go!
Again, they look a mess, but taste amazing.
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