The Farm Paparazzi

I wish you could’ve smelled my house yesterday. It smelled heavenly from my baking frenzy of cabbage burgers and cinnamon rolls. The mixture of fresh-baked bread, savory meat/cabbage mixture and sweet sugar ‘n cinnamon would make anyone drool.

Let me preface this recipe by saying, I’m sorry to my fellow OCD sisters and brothers out there. These instructions will include a lot of “just eyeball it” instructions. It’s taken me many batches of cabbage burgers to get a “feel” for how I like them. I’ll do my best to share tips and suggestions. Don’t be scared! It’s totally worth it in the end. You and I will get through this together.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, we can get down to the business of creating awesomeness.

Cabbage Burgers

The Lauck Family Recipe

Tools:

Large knife and cutting board

Large bowls

Large frying pan

Wooden spoon and slotted spoon

Colander

Rolling pin

Baking sheets

Pastry brush

Ingredients:

2 lb ground beef

1-2 T Canadian steak seasoning

1 medium white or yellow onion, diced

1 medium to large head of green cabbage, shredded (see above)

Premade dough recipe

All purpose flour

1/2 stick butter, melted

To get started, I harvested two heads of cabbage from the garden and made a double batch of the Easiest Roll Dough the day before I made these.

To make the cabbage burgers (cabbage rolls, krautburgers…whatever your family calls ’em), you begin by shredding the cabbage. Never done that before? Here’s a great video tutorial:

For cabbage burgers, I do the slice method mentioned in the video. Make sure to use a good, sharp knife.

I also am slightly picky about the texture of the cabbage I use, so I also tear out any big, hard veins I find. These cabbages were pretty large, so after I cut off the core, I also took out the centers, which was a lot of the thick, veiny stuff anyway.

With cabbage all ready to go, it’s time to brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium high.

Add the onion when the ground beef is mostly browned, but still slightly pink. That way the onions won’t get overcooked.When the ground beef is completely browned (no pink), turn off the heat and drain any excess fat. I put a small glass dish over my sink drain and place my colander on top of it to catch the fat. That way it won’t go down the drain and clog things up.

Pour the ground beef back in the skillet and season with Canadian steak seasoning or your choice of preferred seasoning. DON’T turn the heat back on. Add the cabbage to the skillet (or if there’s not enough room, mix together in a large mixing bowl). It will look like a LOT of cabbage, but don’t be alarmed. It will wilt down. Plus, lots of cabbage means moist, delicious Cabbage Burgers.

The heat from the beef mixture will be enough to wilt down the cabbage. Let it cool in the skillet or transfer to a large bowl to cool. You might want to stick it in the fridge to be safe. Sometimes I do that and finish making the cabbage burgers the next day.

Once the cabbage/meat mixture is completely cooled, pull out your roll dough. If you used my recipe, it’ll look like this.

Using your hands, pull the dough away from the sides and form into a large ball. It will be just slightly sticky.

Sprinkle the counter with a light dusting of flour. Pinch off pieces of the dough and roll into a rough ball with your hands. Don’t overwork this dough. It gets tough pretty fast.

Roll out the dough. Take one long stroke away from you, then one long stroke toward you. Rotate the dough and repeat, flipping over as needed, until it’s about a 1/4″ thick and about 7-8″ long and 6-7″ wide. This makes a fairly large roll.

Using a slotted spoon, carefully heap on top of your rolled-out dough. Don’t be stingy!

Gently, pull up the long sides of your dough and pinch and twist together. Do this all the way down one end, then work down the other side.

The ends will probably have some excess dough. I tear it off and pinch up the ends to close. I’ve tried re-using the ends and it gets too tough to work with, so I usually toss them when I’m done.

Once the dough is closed around the filling, I use the sides of my hands to gently shape into a round form.

Then I place the cabbage burger seam-side down on a baking sheet lined with a baking mat or sprayed with cooking spray. Put 4-5 on a sheet, careful not to overcrowd. Then cover and let rest for 10-20 minutes to rise slightly. Used up all your filling and have dough leftover? Check out this quick Cinnamon Roll recipe!

Bake at 350F until golden brown (about 30 minutes).

Brush with melted butter using a pastry brush.

You can eat them now, or cool for later. To cool, set on wire racks. Once they are mostly cool, place in fridge, uncovered, to completely cool. This will prevent them from releasing steam in bags or containers and getting soggy.

After they are fully cooled, I place them in gallon storage bags and store in the fridge for up to a week. The single recipe makes about eight Cabbage Burgers, depending on the size. I make them pretty big and doubled the recipe, so it produced 15 this time. I also had enough dough leftover to make a batch of Cinnamon Rolls.

Now, go do the dishes. Then come to my house and do mine. It’s only fair. I told you how to make the things.

God Bless You & American Agriculture,

Liz

Since God chose you to be the holy people He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. – Colossians 3:12 (NLT)

We’ve got cabbage ready in the garden and all you German farmers out there know what that means…Krautburgers!

My Farmer Husband loves cabbage burgers. The first thing he said when I harvested a cabbage from our garden was, “Are you going to make cabbage burgers?”

Yes, dear. I will make them. But, first, I’ve got to prepare the dough.

This roll dough recipe is from my high school English/journalism teacher, who is also now my neighbor (I love small towns!). When we got married, she shared several easy recipes with me. Perfect for a new, busy wife!

Here ’tis…

Refrigerator Roll Dough

From the Kitchen of: Mrs. Pat Mitchell

Tools:

One medium and one small mixing bowl (*if you have the kind with lids, even better!)

Liquid measuring cups

Dry measuring cups and spoons

Whisk, wooden spoon, fork

*Large container or bowl with a lid (like a Tupperware or Rubbermaid)

Ingredients:

½ C sugar

1 T salt

2 T shortening

¾ C really hot water

1 C warm water (110-115˚F)

2 T active dry yeast

1 beaten egg

All purpose flour

In a medium bowl, combine the sugar and salt. Add the shortening and pour the hot water over the top to help melt the shortening. Whisk until combined.

In a small bowl, whisk together the warm water, yeast and egg. Make sure the water temperature is right or the yeast won’t activate properly.

Add the yeast mixture to the sugar mixture.

Add flour to consistency. Mix with a wooden spoon. The dough should be soft and not sticky.

I just put my lid on my mixing bowl, but if you don’t have those, put the dough in a container with a tight lid. Place in the refrigerator overnight. After it raises once (and will probably pop the top off), it’s ready.

You can cut off what you want for a meal and make into dinner rolls, buns, cinnamon rolls or cabbage burgers (recipe forthcoming)!

Leave the rest in the fridge for another time. Mrs. Mitchell says it’s good for up to two weeks.

God Bless You & American Agriculture,

Liz

Then [the older women] can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. – Titus 2:4-5 (NIV)

I love recipes! Old favorites, Pinterest finds, recipes from my favorite blog or shared recipes – I can’t get enough of them.

As I’ve gotten older I realize I do love hand-written recipes and wish I’d kept more of the “originals” to my recipe collection. However, I came up in a era of computers, e-mails and social media, so when I started collecting recipes, I typed them on a Word document. Although slightly impersonal, I do love this method because it keeps everything organized and searchable. Need to use up a can of mandarin oranges? I just searched for them in the document and up popped several recipes.

Recipes are meant to be shared and this method makes recipes easy to share by printing or e-mailing.

This is how I organize my recipes. Let’s use Frog Eye Salad as an example. Believe it or not, I have never made Frog Eye Salad, although I’ve eaten more than my share. So, while at a seed meeting last month, in between bites of her Frog Eye Salad, I asked my friend Melinda if she’d please share her recipe with me. She pulled a recipe card out of her binder and let me copy it before we went out in the garden to pick beans and cucumbers. An hour and a huge sack of veggies later, I headed home.

I copied the document into my word file (I have two – one is just for sweets).

I placed it under the proper category.

Then I print it, hole punch it and put the hard copy in my binders. I found these 1/2 page binders at www.keepfiling.com. I’ve been really pleased with the quality of their products.

I also use sticky notes to put tabs on each section so they are easy to locate. I like to write notes and the adjustments I make on the recipes, so I don’t laminate them or put them in page protectors. However, that would be a good idea to keep your recipe sheets clean! Mine eventually get wet and stained. But I think it just adds more character.

Do you have tips for organizing your recipes? I’d love to hear them!

God Bless You & American Agriculture,

Liz

Some call it freezing corn, some call it putting up corn, but whatever you call it, do it!

Last year my friend and farm wife mentor, Melinda, taught me how to freeze fresh sweet corn. I’ll never buy another bag of freezer-isle corn again!

I put up a batch each of regular corn and creamed corn today. I’ll be finding bits of corn all over my kitchen and probably in my hair for the next week or so, but it’s totally worth it.

I’ll teach you how to do it, if you want! Your life will never be the same again.

Ok, here it goes. Are you all ears?

Sorry, I couldn’t help it.

After you’ve picked all your ears, or picked them up from a farmer, organize a shucking party and party hard.

Then run the ears under water and clean off as many silks as possible.

Get out your trusty electric knife and a shallow pan or dish. Melinda taught me to use an angel food cake pan and set the cob of corn on the part that sticks up in the center. It’s a stable place to rest the ear and all the kernels fall into the cake pan. I, however, do not possess an angel food cake pan so I used a shallow cake pan. Use whatever you have that makes sense to you.

Now settle in for a good session of cutting corn off the cob. Don’t get in a hurry! Pay attention to where the blade is at all times. Your fingertips will thank you. Also, keep a dishtowel on your shoulder so you can dry your hands as you go. It’s harder to keep a secure grip with wet hands.

Holding the tip of the cob, cut as far down the ear as you can without hitting the pan you’re cutting on. Then hold the cob up and get the last bits at the bottom. You want to cut deep enough to get as much of the kernel as possible, but try not to cut into the cob. Your corn won’t taste as good with lots of cob in it.

I like to leave the tip of the corn on rather than break it off. That way I have something to hold on to that’s a few rows down from where the knife starts.

However, you definitely want to break off the bottom of the cob so it’s flat. If it doesn’t break off the way you want it, like the ear below, go ahead and cut the cob upside down so the ear is stable while you’re slicing. You don’t want to slip while wielding that electric knife!

For regular corn, dump your pan-fulls into a large pot.

Try not to dump it all over the floor like I did. Do as I say, not as I do.

After you’ve got a pot full, add 1 quart of water, 2/3 C sugar and 4 t of salt. Stir carefully so you don’t slosh it all over the sides.

Bring the corn to a rolling boil and as soon as it starts to boil, take it off the heat and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes.

While waiting, fill the sink or a cooler with ice. After 10 minutes, put the pan in the ice to cool. Go ahead and stir it every little bit to mix the cooler edges with the warmer center. Just be careful not to tip the pot or slosh the goodness over the sides. That would be tragic.

While your glorious concoction is cooling, label quart or pint freezer bags with the date, measurement and corn type before filling.

Once cooled, bag the corn, including the liquid, in equal measurements.

Yes, the paint did come off of my glass measuring cup. And, yes, I did hand write it back on with a Sharpie. Who’s asking?

The baggies can get kinda sticky so I wiped my bags down and stacked them in a box before putting them in the freezer. When it comes time to cook them, pull out your baggie to defrost and warm in a saucepan. Do not drain off the liquid when you serve it…that’s where a lot of the goodness is.

For creamed corn, dump all your cut corn into a large roasting pan.

To your corn add 1 pint of cream, 2/3 C sugar and 4 t salt. Mix as well as you can without sloshing. Add a pound of butter, the sticks cut in half, to the top of the mixture. Cover your roaster with a lid or tin foil and cook in the oven for 90 minutes at 325˚F. Stir the mixture every 20 minutes. The butter will melt in nicely and your mouth will start to water. I won’t judge you if you take a spoon and eat some right out of the oven.

Careful not to slosh it all over your oven while stirring. Not that I’ve ever had experience with that.

When done, ice down and bag just like you did the regular corn.

I shucked about 60 ears of corn for both recipes. I did a little more creamed corn than regular, but all together it made 18 pint baggies at 2 C each. You can adjust the numbers depending on how much you need and/or want to share and how big your family is.

And, yes, it is totally normal to have bits of corn everywhere.

God Bless You & American Agriculture,

Liz

Recipe for Putting Up Corn

As taught to me by Melinda Melcher

About 60 sweet corn ears at peak maturity

Sugar

Salt

Cream (heavy or half and half)

Electric Knife

Pint or quart freezer baggies

Do This First for All Corn…

Shuck the corn. Wash ears and remove as many silks as possible. Using an electric knife, remove all the kernels into shallow pan or angel food cake pan.

For Regular Sweet Corn

Fill a large pot with corn and add 1 qt. of water, 2/3 C sugar and 4 t salt. Stir as best as you can. Put on burner and bring to a rolling boil. Remove from heat immediately after coming to a rolling boil. Let sit for 10 minutes. While waiting, fill sink or tub with ice. Put the pan in the ice to cool. Label bags with date, measurement and corn type before filling. Once cooled, bag the corn (including liquid) in freezer bags with equal measurements (I do 2 cups each). Freeze. When comes time to cook, defrost, warm in pan and do not drain off liquid.

For Cream Corn

Fill a large roaster with cut corn. Add 1 pound of butter (sticks cut in ½), 1 pint of cream, 2/3 C sugar and 4 t salt. Mix as well as you can. Put in preheated oven at 325˚F, covered for 90 minutes. Stir every 20 minutes. Remove from oven and ice down to cool. Bag the same as regular sweet corn.

The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. – Luke 6:40