Kitchen Adventures: Bierocks/Bieracks/Beerocks/Beroaks

Another successful recipe courtesy of Das Essen Unsrer Leute! This time around I delved into the world of bierocks, which are a small rolls stuffed with a cabbage and ground meat mixture. Recipes vary greatly, but that’s it in a nutshell.

Most of the communities had at least one bierock recipe in their chapter, but all except one didn’t bother specifying how to make the roll. So for that I went to the towns of Munjor and Antonino, and Mrs. Wasinger’s recipe for “beerocks” dough.

I can’t say how truly traditional this variation is because it calls for bran cereal. But it uses bran cereal in exactly the way I do for my “always in the house” bran muffins. That is, 1 cup of whole bran cereal softened in 1 cup of boiling water. The result is a hearty and heart-healthy bread.



The recipe wasn’t without its issues. The list of ingredients didn’t include salt, yet the written directions said to add it. How much was a mystery. I took a stab at 1 teaspoon. And the written directions didn’t say when to add the yeast, nor was their any mention of softening the yeast in warm water. So I added the yeast directly to the bran cereal soak - after it had cooled to lukewarm. That seemed to work.

Mrs. Wasinger’s filling variation called for sauerkraut, but I’m fresh of homemade kraut, so for the filling I journeyed over to Pfeifer for Mrs. Roth’s Bieracks recipe. Hers was a chopped cabbage recipe, cooked the ground beef, onions and cabbage in bacon drippings, and included a grated sharp cheddar cheese. Yummy!



I am usually a lot of particular about the brand of cheese I buy, but I mistakenly cheaped out this time around and got the Best Choice Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese, which was extraordinarily mild to the point of tasting like Velveeta.



The end product turned out to be excellent (even though I got distracted by a show on the Halogen channel and left the bierocks in the oven a tad too long), but could be improved by using a true sharp cheese, and perhaps swapping out ground beef for sausage.



It’s a amazing to realize you could feed a large farm family on only 1/2 lb of ground beef! For smaller families, they freeze well and reheat well. I take mine straight out of the freezer and put then in a foil-covered pan in a 200° oven for about 45 minutes to thaw, then pumped it up to 325° for another 15 minutes.