My review on Runza!
Introduction:
I prepared what I was making on Saturday, June 6th. My aunts, Judy and Chris, and my grandma Rennie helped me make the meal. The meal that I’m reviewing for this is called a Runza. A Runza is a German-Russian invention that is also called a bierock. They’re pockets of bread with a meat filling and cruciferous vegetable inside, usually hamburger meat. The restaurant, Runza, where I’m getting my second meal from, is available exclusively in Nebraska. I got the Runza sandwich from the restaurant called Runza on Sunday, June 7th. I made the homemade Runza sandwiches just a day before that. Saturday, June 6th.
Homemade:
The homemade dish tastes pungent and sweet. The dough added a hint of sweetness to the pungent taste of the filling. Because this one is homemade, it is more fresh than industrial, because we served for quality not so much quantity. The sandwiches that I made myself were all different sizes because the way we rolled the dough, it was in a circle and they kind of had to be. Here are the recipe and the instructions combined if you’re interested in trying these!
Dough:
1) Pour 1 cup boiling water over butter/oleo/shortening (3/4 cup) and leave until melted. Set aside and let cool.
2) Beat eggs (2) and mix in sugar (3/4 cup), salt (2 tsp), and 1 cup of cold water.
3) Add 1/2 cup of lukewarm water and sugar (2 tsp) to yeast (2 packages). If it’s too hot it will kill the yeast activation.
4) After the melted butter has cooled, combine the 3 stations in a large bowl and add flour (7 1/2 cups). Mix/knead, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let chill overnight or let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours to rise. Avoid kneading too much, just enough to thoroughly mix.
Filling:
5) Salt the bottom of a large sauce/stock pan over medium heat. Add ground beef (2 lbs), cabbage (1 medium to large head, roughly chopped), onion (1 medium to large, chopped) and garlic (2 cloves, chopped). Season with salt and pepper to taste (takes a lot). Mix together, cover and let cook for 30-40 minutes, or until the ground beef is cooked and the cabbage cooked down, stirring occasionally. (She didn’t add oil to the pan because of how much liquid the beef releases.)
6) Drain the filling into a colander and let cool for a bit.
Assembly:
7) If the dough has been chilled, let stand until at room temperature. Cover a large counter surface with flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin. If you make the full recipe you will probably need to roll it out in two sections. Melt butter (2-3 tbsp) and spread it over the dough. Cut the dough into rectangles of varying sizes. If you want cheese, add 1/2 a slice onto each rectangle. Spoon the ground beef mixture onto each rectangle.
8) For each rectangle, take all corners and fold them into the center. Fold up all open areas and pinch them closed. Place each runza into a casserole dish with the folded side down, cover with a clean towel, and let sit for 20 minutes to rise more.
9) Place in a 425-degree oven and cook for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and brush the sandwiches with butter and you’re done.
Restaurant:
In all honesty, the dish looked quite unappetizing, the runza sandwich was kind of flat and the filling and cheese were coming out of a little hole, it was also a bit too greasy for my liking. The dish surprisingly doesn’t smell like it comes from a fast-food restaurant, which it does. It smells almost as homey as the homemade dish. It smelled quite garlicky too. The touch, the feel of the food tasted quite similar to its homemade counterpart, it was soft and dry bread. This dish tasted more pungent than salty, because of the filling inside, but the bread was a nice evening out.
Conclusion:
I definitely preferred the restaurant dish, even though it looked less appetizing, you could taste the gooey cheese. Not coming from my past-time of having these already before ever having the homemade ones, the restaurant bread was better. In the homemade ones, there was a bit too much dough, and it kind of overpowered the filling. I am not one to prefer restaurant food over homemade food, but this is one of those times where I do.
The big differences between the two dishes are that the homemade Runzas was quite a lot smaller than the restaurant ones because we had to make enough for everyone at the house, there were about 8 of us, and the dough was kind of lumped together at the bottom so that the filling wouldn’t fall out.
The restaurant Runza looked much less appetizing though because the dough was not completely stuck together, and some of the filling and cheese were peeping out of the little holes in the dough where it should’ve been closed.
I would like to make the homemade Runza sandwiches again because they didn’t turn out as well as I had originally hoped, but I would most definitely recommend the restaurant Runza to people who live in Nebraska (or visit,) because that’s the only place where it is. I would say to the people who adhere to my recommendation, don’t judge a book by its cover.
When getting the restaurant part of my project done, I saw one of the Pollan’s 5 food transformations in there. Quality to quantity. I feel like since the sandwich looked so unappetizing, and since it’s a fast-food restaurant, they just don’t really care about the quality of their food because there are hundreds of thousands of people that go there every day, and losing one customer isn’t that big of a blow to their company.
I prepared what I was making on Saturday, June 6th. My aunts, Judy and Chris, and my grandma Rennie helped me make the meal. The meal that I’m reviewing for this is called a Runza. A Runza is a German-Russian invention that is also called a bierock. They’re pockets of bread with a meat filling and cruciferous vegetable inside, usually hamburger meat. The restaurant, Runza, where I’m getting my second meal from, is available exclusively in Nebraska. I got the Runza sandwich from the restaurant called Runza on Sunday, June 7th. I made the homemade Runza sandwiches just a day before that. Saturday, June 6th.
Homemade:
The homemade dish tastes pungent and sweet. The dough added a hint of sweetness to the pungent taste of the filling. Because this one is homemade, it is more fresh than industrial, because we served for quality not so much quantity. The sandwiches that I made myself were all different sizes because the way we rolled the dough, it was in a circle and they kind of had to be. Here are the recipe and the instructions combined if you’re interested in trying these!
Dough:
1) Pour 1 cup boiling water over butter/oleo/shortening (3/4 cup) and leave until melted. Set aside and let cool.
2) Beat eggs (2) and mix in sugar (3/4 cup), salt (2 tsp), and 1 cup of cold water.
3) Add 1/2 cup of lukewarm water and sugar (2 tsp) to yeast (2 packages). If it’s too hot it will kill the yeast activation.
4) After the melted butter has cooled, combine the 3 stations in a large bowl and add flour (7 1/2 cups). Mix/knead, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let chill overnight or let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours to rise. Avoid kneading too much, just enough to thoroughly mix.
Filling:
5) Salt the bottom of a large sauce/stock pan over medium heat. Add ground beef (2 lbs), cabbage (1 medium to large head, roughly chopped), onion (1 medium to large, chopped) and garlic (2 cloves, chopped). Season with salt and pepper to taste (takes a lot). Mix together, cover and let cook for 30-40 minutes, or until the ground beef is cooked and the cabbage cooked down, stirring occasionally. (She didn’t add oil to the pan because of how much liquid the beef releases.)
6) Drain the filling into a colander and let cool for a bit.
Assembly:
7) If the dough has been chilled, let stand until at room temperature. Cover a large counter surface with flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin. If you make the full recipe you will probably need to roll it out in two sections. Melt butter (2-3 tbsp) and spread it over the dough. Cut the dough into rectangles of varying sizes. If you want cheese, add 1/2 a slice onto each rectangle. Spoon the ground beef mixture onto each rectangle.
8) For each rectangle, take all corners and fold them into the center. Fold up all open areas and pinch them closed. Place each runza into a casserole dish with the folded side down, cover with a clean towel, and let sit for 20 minutes to rise more.
9) Place in a 425-degree oven and cook for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and brush the sandwiches with butter and you’re done.
Restaurant:
Conclusion:
I definitely preferred the restaurant dish, even though it looked less appetizing, you could taste the gooey cheese. Not coming from my past-time of having these already before ever having the homemade ones, the restaurant bread was better. In the homemade ones, there was a bit too much dough, and it kind of overpowered the filling. I am not one to prefer restaurant food over homemade food, but this is one of those times where I do.
The big differences between the two dishes are that the homemade Runzas was quite a lot smaller than the restaurant ones because we had to make enough for everyone at the house, there were about 8 of us, and the dough was kind of lumped together at the bottom so that the filling wouldn’t fall out.
The restaurant Runza looked much less appetizing though because the dough was not completely stuck together, and some of the filling and cheese were peeping out of the little holes in the dough where it should’ve been closed.
I would like to make the homemade Runza sandwiches again because they didn’t turn out as well as I had originally hoped, but I would most definitely recommend the restaurant Runza to people who live in Nebraska (or visit,) because that’s the only place where it is. I would say to the people who adhere to my recommendation, don’t judge a book by its cover.
When getting the restaurant part of my project done, I saw one of the Pollan’s 5 food transformations in there. Quality to quantity. I feel like since the sandwich looked so unappetizing, and since it’s a fast-food restaurant, they just don’t really care about the quality of their food because there are hundreds of thousands of people that go there every day, and losing one customer isn’t that big of a blow to their company.
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