Further Adventures from my Kitchen - Krautrunzels

My wonderful mother-in-law made this dish where she stuffed buns with hamburger and cabbage. She always called them Groutrunzels but they being a German dish involving cabbage, I’m thinking the correct term is actually Krautrunzels because Kraut is cabbage in German and when you say it they actually sound very similar and if the person who gave her the recipe spoke with an accent, even more. My husband loves them.

This past week I had planned to make these treats for my hunny as a surprise. I had asked him if he wanted me to make something else on the weekend and gave him 2 choices. While he was outside tending the Bar B Q I pulled out my mother-in-law’s recipe box to try to find the recipe. My husband came back in the house and said “you know if you want to make me something you could make me Groutrunzels”. Way to spoil the surprise my love! ;) I guess that meant it was time for me to do this for him because it was on his mind too.

I couldn’t find a recipe for them though in her treasured recipe box so I phoned her best friend who used to make them with her all the time. She didn’t have a recipe but she knew which bun recipe in the box to use and told me how to make the filling. The phone call sent her on a lovely trip down memory lane. She misses her dearest friend as much as I miss my beautiful, wonderful, loving, generous mother-in-love. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of her passing to a better place. The void that she left is incredible.

Back to my adventure… I have helped my mother make buns numerous times, but always with the punching down of the dough and the shaping of the buns, never with the actual making with proofing the yeast and kneading the dough. It was with much trepidation that I tackled this project. The recipe that she used is called Air Buns. I did a little dance when after 10 minutes of soaking in the warm sugar water my yeast was the way it should be. I kneaded the dough like a pro warmed up my oven and let it sit for 2 hours and clapped joyfully when I opened the oven to see that it had risen just the way it was supposed to. I let my son tackle the punching down of the dough. Let it rise for another hour. In the meantime I made the filling, which is so simple. Hamburger chopped cabbage and diced onion with salt & pepper and I added some steak spice (because I add steak spice to almost everything). I stuck it in the freezer for a couple of minutes to cool it a bit and you want to drain the fat/liquid so that the inside of the bun doesn’t get greasy.

Finally, hours after beginning, the process comes together. You grab a handful of the risen dough and pinch it off. You roll it flat and then spoon in some of the hamburger mixture. Then you pull in the edges and pinch them together and put the newly formed bun, pinched end down on the cookie sheet.

Set the cookie sheet aside covered with a tea towel for another hour or three. Then bake according to the bun recipe.

My husband’s family dips them in ketchup when they eat them.

It was a lot of work and so time consuming, but it was worth every minute to see how happy it made my wonderful husband. We figured it has been at least 5 years since the last time he had one. It won’t be 5 years before he has them again.

Adventures in my kitchen

My culinary skills have been a real adventure in developing. I have always known the basics that I learned in my mother's kitchen and home ec classes and often tend to stick to the same tried and true recipes that I always make. Go-tos that I don't have to think about and don't have to get creative for. When we were first married, I didn't cook much. We were usually busy doing things and working and we ate out far too much. When I did cook it was at a very basic level.

When my son was born and I was home on maternity leave that had to change. I would spend hours combing through all of my recipe books and trying various things. I would have supper on the table when my husband came home from work and he never knew what he was getting (poor guy). Unfortunately for him, not everything worked out well. I have learned many lessons in how NOT to cook. But my husband has valiantly eaten nearly everything that I have prepared and has always been encouraging.

Most of the incidents and offensive things that I tried to feed to my poor hubby have long been forgotten as my skills have improved but there is one incident that still gets brought up from time to time, and just yesterday again. My son was maybe 2 at the time.

I decided that I was going to try to make Chicken Noodle Soup - from scratch!

I bought a nice little chicken and had it simmering with onion and celery and carrots and spices ALL DAY LONG. Oh boy it smelled so so good. The tastes I took told me I had a wonderful soup on my hands and I couldn't wait to impress my husband with this wonderful creation that I made. When it came time to take the chicken and vegetables out of the stock I was puzzled by how best to do that without burning the skin off my hands. I had an "aha" moment and thought I will pour it through my strainer which will catch all of the solids, then I can cut up the chicken when it cools a bit.

As the very last little bit of stock poured down my drain, I very sadly realized that I did not think far enough ahead to put a bowl under the strainer. I cried. All that I had left of my whole day of cooking was a pile of boiled chicken meat. I got my husband to pick up some chicken pieces with bones on his way home and tried so very hard to salvage something - but alas it was a watery broth and tough chewy flavourless chicken. Probably the worst culinary disaster that I personally have ever made. I am so glad that now I can cook (and I am positive my husband is too). I don't even try to cook chicken stock anymore due to time restraints really and it is so easy to buy it at the grocery store and add it to the soups that I make now to save time.

I have really grown in my adventure level in this past year. I have lived my life really not caring for spicy hot foods but my husband is slowly converting me. I made salsa one year because I had picked up 25 pounds of tomatoes but didn't know what to do with them. I tweaked it the next year and this year I have perfected it and made 3 batches for home and helped someone else make a batch. While making the third batch my husband asked for me to try to make hot sauce (What, you can make hot sauce at home??? was the first thing that came to mind). While making hot sauce he suggested that he might really like bar-b-que sauce to come out of the mad science of my kitchen as well.

I made the sauce as well as a dry rib rub the other night and my hunny massaged the rub into a rack of ribs and let it marinate over night and slow baked them in the oven yesterday and then put them on the BBQ low and slow and slathered them over and over again with the sauce. I don't care for ribs so he made me a pork chop. I tasted the ribs though and even I thought they were impressively good. I didn't actually cook the meal, but I brought a whole ton of flavour to the party, so I think it counts.