Catherine the Great & the Volga Germans

What do Catherine the Great and the state of Kansas have in common? Not much, I'm not gonna lie, but what there is is delicious. They're called biroks and they are beef and cabbage stuffed into a sweet dough and truly one of my favorite things to make. I am so excited to share these with you. The bread reminds me of the Sally Lunn bun that I made when I first started the channel so if you like those or really anything that's delicious you'll want to stick around. So thank you to Babbel for sponsoring this video as we make one of my favorite foods ever and explore the connection between the Empress of Russia and Kansas. This time on Tasting History. I love biroks. I would have one of those I love New York but I love biroks shirts made. Maybe I'll actually do that. They are so, so good. My dad used to make them for us growing up and it was always a special occasion and you knew it was because they're not like a quick thing to make. They do require a bit of work but I promise you it is so worth it. Now this is one of those dishes where I had trouble finding a lot of historic recipes. Most everything that I did find came from community cookbooks from the early 20th century. These were cookbooks that were put together by the community, recipes from your Aunt Ida and whatever, compiled and then sold to benefit the local church or the local school or whatever, and since they're compiled from a bunch of different people they're usually written in all different styles. So you have some recipes that are very well written and easy to follow and then you have recipes that are like well most of the ones for biroks. Things like beef and kraut cook together, flavor and make biroks. Didn't even spell it right and what's worse most of these recipes even though they were done in like the Midwest are in German and not just any German but a German that is kind of from the 1700s and punctuated with bits of Russian and English in it. And I'll explain how that happened a little bit later on but suffice it to say my two semesters of German in college just didn't really, really do the trick and I really probably should have brushed up on the language with some lessons from our sponsor today, Babbel. Babbel is a fantastic way to learn a language whether you want to translate old recipes or more practically if you want to converse with people in another country for business or if you're doing any traveling. Though maybe you just want to learn a new language for the sake of learning something new which frankly I think is the best reason to ever learn anything. 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Now when it comes to the recipes I did finally get them translated for the most part but they still weren't very helpful because they were so poorly written so this is cobbled from a little bit of those and more from recipes a little bit later on 40s, 50s, and 60s. Also it is a bit of a process so I'm going to actually break it kind of up into two parts. First the dough and then the filling. So for the dough what you'll need is one and a half teaspoons of active dry yeast, a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of warm water, six cups or 720 grams of flour, two-thirds cup or 135 grams of sugar, one and a half teaspoons of salt, one and a half cups or 350 milliliters of milk, 10 tablespoons or 140 grams of butter, and two eggs lightly beaten. So first pour the milk into a large saucepan and set it over medium heat to scald the milk. Stirring frequently you want to bring it to 180 degrees Fahrenheit or 82 degrees Celsius. Scalded milk is actually great for pretty much all baked recipes but especially cakes and breads. They tend to make them rise more and just be softer and fluffier. It's a fantastic trick. Now as soon as the milk hits 180 degrees take it off the heat and add in the butter. As you whisk it in it'll help bring down the temperature of the milk because it does need to be no more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit or else it will kill the yeast when we add it, and as for the yeast add it to that quarter cup of lukewarm water and sprinkle just a little bit of the sugar in, then mix it up and let it sit until it's nice and foamy. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar making sure that everything is well incorporated. Then pour in the activated yeast, the eggs, and the milk and butter mixture and mix until the ingredients come together to make a dough, and it will come together to make a dough but that dough is going to be really, really sticky and frankly not very pleasant to work with. So you can knead this by hand for about 15 minutes but it's going to be so much easier to do it in a stand mixer if you have one, so if you do have one now is the time to use it. Though you might have to add just a few tablespoons more flour but do it sparingly. You're looking for a nice silky kind of elastic dough but it's still going to be rather sticky and you might think that you're not done but I promise it will firm up as it rises. So put the dough in a lightly greased bowl and then cover it and let it rise for 45 minutes, then uncover it, punch it down, and then re-cover it and let it rise for another 30 minutes, and while it rises I wanted to let you know that my brother and I are leaving later this week for a trip to Scotland where I'm going to be filming a few episodes and doing some other stuff over there so if you want to follow along on the trip and maybe get some food history snippets while I'm over there then follow me on Instagram tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and you'll get to be part of the trip. But before I jet off to Scotland I do believe that I promised you that I would explain this connection between Biroks and Empress Catherine the Great. The story of the Birok and the people who made them begins in 18th century Prussia where it was decided that a young princess named Sophie was to marry Peter the future Tsar of Russia. So at the age of 16 this well-educated princess Sophie left her German-speaking friends and family and her German culture to take up residence at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg as the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alexievna, the future Catherine the Great. Now Catherine's early years in Russia are fascinating and eventually I need to do an entire video on what they ate at the Winter Palace, it's spectacular but for this just know that in 1762 she led a coup against her husband Tsar Peter III, deposed him and took the imperial throne for herself. With her husband out of the way Catherine went straight to work reforming Russia and she decided that it was about time they settled some of the more remote parts of her empire especially those lands along the South Volga River. The area was lush and the soil was good but it was way far away from pretty much everything and the only people who lived there were bandits constantly robbing people so her people didn't really want to move there and this was also a time where the majority of her country were still serfs and they couldn't go anywhere so yeah nobody was going. But at the same time the Seven Years War, one of Europe's most devastating wars up to that point had just ended leaving much of Western Europe in a social and economic mess so Catherine decided to do as many monarchs had done before her and invited those non-Russians to colonize her lands. She wrote two manifestos. Now the first one didn't really go anywhere but the second issued on July 22nd, 1763 was far more successful. We Catherine II by the grace of God are sufficiently aware of the vast extent of the lands within our empire. A considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. We permit all foreigners to come into our empire in order to settle. Since those foreigners who would like to settle in Russia will include some who do not have sufficient means to pay the travel costs, Russia will transport them at our expense and also provide them with travel money. It's really not that bad of a deal. Plus she said the immigrants could settle anywhere in Russia that they liked and they could all apply for long-term interest-free loans to pay for farms, equipment, and other industry once they settled. They were also exempt from military service and exempt from taxes of any kind for the first 30 years if they settled in the country and the first five if they settled in a city. They were free to practice their religion and even build churches and bell towers though no monasteries for some reason, and they were forbidden from trying to convert the Russian Orthodox people to their brand of Christianity. The only citizens that they were allowed to convert were Russian Muslims but even then they had to win them over and make them subject to the Christian religion in a decent way. Well this offer was very tempting and so over the next three years 30,000 Germans packed up and headed to Russia and the only reason that it didn't continue after that was because the German rulers seeing all their people getting up and leaving were like no you cannot leave anymore, and Catherine didn't really put up a fight when that happened because one the the program was far more successful than they had ever imagined, and two because they were paying for everyone they kind of ran out of money. But for those Germans and there were others that weren't German but the vast majority were German who did make it to Russia they found that most of the promises of the manifesto were kept. Most. One that was not kept was the guarantee to settle anywhere you liked. Instead most of them were gently guided to the Volga River Valley. Just keep going until you hit the river you're gonna love it, and did they love it? Not at first. See many found that no matter what profession they had back in their home country they were probably going to be a farmer in Russia because you know if there were two surgeons in your group of settlers there only needed to be one so it was kind of a farmer. Also that first Russian winter really came as a bit of a shock. One settler recalled after much longing spring finally came, however there was no enthusiasm in the people to enjoy the splendors of nature as they stared upon each other as though they were half dead persons. Now the first 10 years were really kind of touch and go but as time went on it got better and the South Volga River became a German enclave within Russia. They spoke German, they celebrated German holidays, all of their architecture was in the German style and they had German Christian religions mostly Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite. Now sometimes a bit of that Russian culture would sneak in. It couldn't help but do so especially in their language but even more so in their food. Back in Germany they ate cabbage and sauerkraut but in Russia it was not an accompaniment, it was the whole dish because along with wheat and potatoes it was what grew best in their new soil and much of their cuisine was basically these three ingredients in different combinations. One Russian food in particular that seemed to have caught on was the pirozhki which was a baked or fried dough often filled with meat, cabbage, and onions and its cousin the pirog may have given biroks their name but there's another theory that name actually comes from a Turkish meat filled pastry but the pastry actually looks quite a bit different so who knows but either way biroks were one of those dishes that the Volga Germans took with them when they began to leave 110 years after they arrived. Now the exodus of Volga Germans from Russia lasted several decades culminating in a genocide by Stalin but it's that first wave from the 1870s that is germane to the story of biroks. Basically when Catherine the Great died the rights enumerated in her manifesto which were never fully realized really started to be stripped away completely, and between 1871 and 1874 the last of those rights were revoked under Tsar Alexander II. The straw that broke the camel's back was the revocation of the right to not be conscripted into the military. See a lot of the Volga Germans were Mennonites and hence ardent pacifists so with the possibility of violence now in their future they packed up and left. Here in Russia it's no good to live we must our men as soldiers give and now as soldiers we must stand that's why we leave the Russian land. Several parties were sent out to find new lands to settle Some went to Brazil though they ended up finally in Argentina but most of them went to the United States. The first scouts landed in New York and found it quite unsuitable. Then they moved on to Ohio which too was less than ideal but finally they got to Nebraska and Kansas and they found the farmland so similar to that of the Russian steppe along the Volga River that it was as if they were already home but it turns out they had trouble fitting in and I kind of imagine Kansas in the 1870s to be a lot like that scene when Harold Hill first gets off the train in River City, Iowa. I'm a stranger in your town. What do you folks do around here for excitement? Mind our business. Less than hospitable to strangers and it didn't help that they didn't speak English and even the German-American immigrants couldn't really understand them well enough because they were speaking a German basically from 150 years before and now it was also punctuated with little bits of Russian. So they kind of kept to themselves and this led to several generations of people just still speaking German and their culture and food seems relatively unchanged in some places going all the way up to World War II but the war really opened things up for everyone and a lot of change happened and that includes change to Biroks. This is when recipes really start to vary and lots of new ingredients are being added though the bones are pretty much still always the same today as they were 150 years ago and this is also when you start to see other names for them including which may be what Sarah Sally Everett's family in Nebraska called them when she modified their recipe and shortened the name to Runza and she and her brother in 1949 began selling them and now today the Runza restaurant chain has 86 locations but as there is no Runza restaurant anywhere near me I'm going to have to make them on my own and they still need a filling. So for the filling what you'll need is two to three tablespoons of oil for frying, one large yellow onion diced, one pound or 450 grams of lean ground beef, a half cup or 150 grams of sauerkraut drained of any liquid, one large head of cabbage shredded, one teaspoon of crushed caraway seeds, and salt and pepper to taste. I start off with about a teaspoon of each. You can add more later on but the sauerkraut if you're adding sauerkraut can be very, very salty and it's kind of hard to gauge what it's actually going to do to the dish until it's already cooked. Now those are the standard ingredients that are in pretty much every old recipe but then there are almost always other ingredients added that kind of make it the cook's own and these could be anything from cheese to dill to pickle juice to garlic or my favorite Dijon mustard. Two to three tablespoons should do it. So first heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat then add the onions and cook them until they're nice and soft and becoming translucent. Takes about 10 minutes. Then increase the heat a bit and add the ground beef. Break it up as it's cooking and then let it cook for seven to eight minutes or until it's nicely browned. Then add the shredded cabbage. Now depending on the size of your pan you may want to just put half in, let it cook down for a minute and then put in the other half. Let it cook for a few minutes making sure everything gets mixed up and then add the sauerkraut, the caraway, and the salt and the pepper, and finally the mustard or whatever other ingredients you want to add. Keep mixing and let it cook for another five minutes then give it a taste and adjust any of the flavors. More salt, more pepper, more mustard. Then remove it from the heat and let it cool to room temperature and while it cools pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius. Then turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 15 even portions and form those into balls, and it doesn't need to be a perfect little ball. You're not making them into loaves, just round clumps of dough. Then roll each ball into a disc about six to seven inches across and about a quarter of an inch thick. Again doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't even need to be a disc, it's going to end up being round once we're finished. Then place a heaping third cup of filling into the center of the dough and fold the edges into the middle. Now here is where the shaping actually kind of matters. You want to build up the dough right in the center so instead of just folding it over and and doing it that way you want to kind of make a bunch of little folds and then pinch them in the middle to make almost like a parcel. Once they're closed set them on a lined and lightly greased baking sheet making sure to leave an inch between each one. Then you're going to let them rise for another 20 minutes and then pop them into the oven. Now you probably should not do what I do and put them all in at once. You should put one tray in at a time. They color better that way. I was- I was- I don't know what I was thinking. Now depending on your oven it can take 20 to 25 minutes but really what you're looking for is that it's starting to brown. You don't want them too, too dark but you do want some golden color on the top. Then take them out and brush them with melted butter. I mean this recipe just keeps getting better and better, and here we are the Biroks of the Volga Germans. The aroma of all of that filling just oh it's fantastic. It's like the sweetness from the onion and then obviously the the meat has its own smell but then you get this a little bit of spice from the from the mustard and I don't know maybe it's because I grew up on these but it's like Christmas and your birthday all in all in a little package. Let's give them a shot though. It's still quite hot so yeah maybe give them a couple minutes to cool down. Still really hot but so good I just kept eating. It is- it's just so delicious. I mean it's like a brioche right out of the oven but then it's filled with meat and the cabbage you know it doesn't impart a ton of flavor it's more of a texture because it adds a little bit of crunch. Even though it's cooked and you know soft there's still a little bit of a crunch there so the texture is really nice. It's not just- it's not just like hamburger meat on the inside. The flavor is also not like hamburger meat. It's so, so different even when it's just cabbage, onion, and and ground beef. There is something kind of special about it I guess but when you add the caraway and for me it's the mustard but the caraway it's such a- we don't eat it a lot so it's very unique and it's just oh so good. I could eat all of these not in one sitting but in two. I mean they're big but I can eat like five at a time. They're just- I shouldn't but they're so, so good. Make these. It's a bit of an undertaking but it is so, so worth it. You can even buy the dough. You can get dough like this that'll save you some time but if you got the time do it from scratch. It's worth it. So just a reminder if you want to follow my trip to Scotland over the next couple weeks make sure to follow me on Instagram, Tasting History with Max Miller, and I'll still have videos coming out even while I'm gone so extra content, and I'll see you next time on Tasting History. I might eat all of them. Don't judge me.