Hungarian Stuffed Sauerkraut

Total Time: 2 hrs Preparation Time: 20 mins Cook Time: 1 hr 40 mins

Ingredients

• Servings: 4
• 1 kg ground beef, shoulder is the best
• 2 kg sauerkraut
• 2 large onions, peeled and diced
• 1 egg
• 1 cup rice, uncooked
• speck (a middling-sized piece, minced and divided in half) or ham (a middling-sized piece, minced and divided in half) or lean bacon (a middling-sized piece, minced and divided in half)
• oil
• water
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• paprika
• salt
• sour cream, for serving
• pepper
• 1 teaspoon marjoram

Recipe

• 1 squeeze out all excess liquid from sauerkraut into sink from and place in a bowl.
• 2 cook the rice (you should end up with about three cups).
• 3 put ground meat into another large bowl - you will need the space!
• 4 in a large deep saucepan, in which you will be cooking the meal; braise the onion in plenty of oil, so it won't burn - until glassy.
• 5 when done, pour off the oil, using spatula to keep onion in saucepan.
• 6 divide the cooked onions, leaving one half in saucepan
• 7 place the other half on the meat.
• 8 turn off the heat and put in plenty of paprika and the tomato sauce on onion left in pan.
• 9 pour in some water, just as much so the mixture gets creamy.
• 10 let cool a little, then pour on sauerkraut and mix together.
• 11 take the bowl with the meat and onion.
• 12 make a well in the middle of the meat mixture, add the egg and mix together with your hands.
• 13 mix in cooked rice.
• 14 add paprika for nice red color, salt and pepper to taste and marjoram.
• 15 knead until smooth.
• 16 make sure to taste while you are working with it. this meal should be quite spicy! but not too spicy!
• 17 place one third of the sauerkraut mixture into your sausepan and place half of the speck/ham/lean bacon on top.
• 18 make meatballs about the size of a kiwi - don't need to make them hard.
• 19 place in the pan, next to each other to make a "meatball layer".
• 20 put a second layer of sauerkraut mixture on top of it, then another layer of meatballs.
• 21 top it with the remaining sauerkraut.
• 22 place other half of speck on top.
• 23 you must completely cover the meat layers with sauerkraut leaving no holes.
• 24 pour in water only until you can see it appear on the side - to about 3/4 of the pan.
• 25 cover, and cook on low heat. do not stir!
• 26 occasionally lift pan up and move back and forth sideways, like you were steering your car.
• 27 it is done when sauerkraut is so soft it melts in your mouth. you don't need to taste the meat, because it cooks sooner than the sauerkraut, so it is 100% done if your sauerkraut is cooked.
• 28 serve with sour cream.