foodperson.com

What do you do with ground beef when you don’t want hamburgers, meatballs, meatloaf or tacos? I suppose you could make shepherd’s pie or some such. I instead made bierochs (also spelled bierocks).

This traditional food—a bun stuffed with a beef-onion-cabbage mixture—is familiar in rural Kansas, especially those settled by Volga Germans, according to some sources. It also seemed like a nice change of pace on a chilly afternoon.

I essentially followed Bob Dole‘s recipe. Yea, that Bob Dole. He contributed his recipe to the book I wrote for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius‘s second inauguration. (It’s available at the Kansas State Historical Society if you are interested.) Like many traditional recipes, it was a little sketchy, but my bierochs turned out great.

Maybe you’d like to try.

Bierochs

• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• Butter
• 1 pound hamburger
• 1 medium cabbage, shredded
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 recipe yeast dough

1. Brown onion in butter in skillet; add hamburger and brown. Steam cabbage in separate pan in butter just until done. Add cabbage to hamburger mixture. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Roll dough out 1/4-inch thick. Cut into 6-inch squares. Place 3 tablespoons hamburger mixture into each square. Pull 4 corners together; pinch edges firmly. Place in greased pan, pinched edges down
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until done. Serve hot. Bierochs may be wrapped in foil and frozen. Makes 6 servings.

One roll

A sheet of rolls

A few notes

I browned the hamburger by itself and drained it. Then I stir-fried the onion in a tablespoon or so of butter in a skillet, added the cabbage, covered the pan, reduced heat to low and steamed until tender. I added the ground beef and about 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper to the cabbage mixture.

My bierochs weren’t exactly of uniform size, and I put more like 1/4 cup filling into each roll—and still had about 1 1/2 cups (or more) of filling left over. Guess I didn’t use the right recipe yeast dough! I got nine rolls out of the recipe.

If you make bierochs, tell me how you assemble them and how big a bread-dough recipe you use, maybe in terms of cups of flour in the dough.