Shayne and I have decided to try to do some "cooking ahead" so we have some quick, ready-to-heat meals in the fridge or freezer. Naturally, the first recipe we decided to make was bierocks. I'd made them once before, using a basic recipe a few years ago back at the Morris house, and while they were quite fine as the recipe was written, Shayne was ready to do his usual cooking magic on the recipe.

This is the recipe I've used in the past: http://www.food.com/recipe/bierocks-german-hamburger-and-cabbage-filled-.... Shayne, of course, doctored up the filling mixture (even used some of his own home-made sauerkraut). We also had the philosophical argument over "Kansas-style bierocks" (square or round) or "Nebraska-style bierock/runza" (rectangular). Guess who won.

Here's what Shayne did for the filling:
3 lb hamburger
about 3/4 head of cabbage, shredded, then salted, then extra liquid squeezed out
large white onion
large cup of home-made sauerkraut
12 oz can of beer
salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder
Tbsp of beef bouillion
1/2 tsp chicken bouillion
splash of pickle juice (Claussen's Kosher Dill)

I made a double-batch of the sweet roll dough (from the recipe linked above) but was short on AP flour so used about half bread flour. Eight cups of flour is about the limit of the Kitchen-Aid mixer. After the first rising, I divided the dough in four parts, each around 500 grams. We ended up using only half of the dough. The first time I made this dough, I hadn't quite got the Kitchen-Aid adjusted correctly, so my dough had come out kind of super-elastic and hard to roll out. Shayne didn't like the "too-bready" bierocks so much, so he was determined to roll the dough out much thinner this time. We actually went a bit too thin, so we could have used more of the dough. Shayne rolled out the dough, and I filled each bierock, using about 1 and 3/4 icecream-scoops of filling for each one. We also didn't do the second rising after assembly/before baking.

We ended up with a grand total of 16 super-sized bierocks. A dozen went in the freezer for future meals. We think we could probably get 2 dozen by adjusting the amount of filling in each bierock next time we make these.

The two extra balls of sweet roll dough (500 g each) also went in the freezer.