Mennonite Monday - Runzas

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

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This week Runzas were voted as the recipe I should make for Mennonite Monday. Over on the right side of my blog, you will see a spot where it says "What should I make for Mennonite Monday?" Each week there are four options. Place you vote every week and see if that is the recipe I make next week.

This recipe for Runzas is first recipe in the yellow church cookbook on page 62. There are several Runza recipes between the two cookbooks and they are all a little different. I hope to try one of the other recipes in the future to compare them.

Runzas

1/2 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup warm water
1 package or 2 tablespoons dry yeast
3 1/4 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Scald milk and mix with sugar, salt, and shortening. Add one cup four to milk, together with yeast and egg. Continue adding four. Let rise 1 hour.

Hamburger mixture:
Brown 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger and onion
Add:
1/2 head cabbage, chopped
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano

Mix and simmer for 30 minutes. Roll out dough, cut in 4 inch squares. Put a spoon of meat mixture on the square, fold corners and pinch together. Turn over on pan with fold underneath. Bake 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

It didn't say to let the yeast set for 5 minutes in the warm water, but I did that because the new years cookie recipe had me do that with the yeast.

I was a little worried about scalding the milk. I had asked for advice a few weeks ago and all I could remember was something about bubbles around the edge of the pot. So I googled it. After skimming the information about scalding milk, I gathered that you need to stir and the milk should be around 185 degrees. So between looking for bubbles, stirring and measuring the temperature I think the milk was scalded.

Then I added the sugar, salt and shortening.

and mixed in the flour

I used the big mixer for the rest of the flour even though I could have done it by hand because the dough didn't get very tough.

I put my dough in a bowl and set it by our space heater for an hour so it could rise.

I made my Hamburger mixture ahead of time, so it could set in the refrigerator to cool. This way when you spoon the mixture onto the dough, the hamburger juices don't run all over.

For Christmas I received this nice pastry mat, so it was easy to make squares of dough. However we do like our Runzas a little bigger, so my square were 5-6 inches instead of 4.

We also like the middle to be full, so I used about two spoonfuls.

My first batch of Runzas were pretty brown after 20 minutes in the oven, so for the second batch (shown above) checked them pretty often after 15 minutes and took them out when I thought they were brown enough. So you may need to adjust the bake time according to your oven.