Meat Perishky

This recipe is from my sister Rhoda. She is a fantastic cook and we always say our Mom passed on to us how to cook food with flavor. She hosts many people in their home and you can be sure that the food is always delish!

Meat Filling

• 3 pounds hamburger meat
• can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 pkg. onion soup mix
• 1 cup bread crumbs

1. Fry meat and drain any fat.
2. Add other ingredients and blend well cooking over low-med heat for about 5 minutes.
3. Let meat mixture cool.
   

Bun Dough

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup melted lard (I use tender flake shortening)
• 1 egg(well beaten)
• 1 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1 /1/2 tbsp instant yeast
• flour

In a large microwavable bowl melt lard. Add milk, water, salt,and well beaten egg. Whisk together well and microwave until hot.

Put 8 cups of flour in a large bowl and stir in the yeast. Pour the hold liquid mixture over the flour and stir until all the flour is moist. Continue to add flour while kneading. You will need to add at least 2-4 more cups of flour. Add about 1/2 cup at a time. You will begin to get a nice soft but not sticky dough that kneads smoothly. It will begin to form allot of air bubbles from the yeast as you knead. I knead at least 10-12 minutes. Form the bun dough into a large ball and very lightly coat with oil. Cover dough with a clean tea towel and place away from draft until double.

These buns can be made large or very tiny. I make them small at Christmas, about the size of a large egg. This is very time consuming. Judy also put her Meat Perishky recipe on the blog and hers are the size of a regular bun. I am making this batch like hoaggie buns.

Parchment line or grease baking pans.

Pinch off a piece of dough abit bigger than a golf ball. Flatten in your palm to a long oval shape. Place a scoop of cooled meat mixture onto dough and pinch shut. place 'seam' side down on baking sheets. This takes a little practice, but the dough is good to work with and stays tight.

Preheat oven to 400 and bake for about 18 minutes.

These are good dipped in ketchup or hot mustard. They freeze very well.

TIP: to re-heat these thaw on counter for about 1/2 hour. Pre-heat oven to 350. Place buns in a roaster, and turn every 7 minutes for about 20 minutes. They will taste like you just baked them. I'm freezing these for camping and will double foil them to re-heat over the BBQ away from direct heat.

Sometimes as I go along in the kitchen I come up with something new. I ran out of meat filling before I ran out of dough so I thought I would create something new with the left over dough. There was enough for 1 large loaf of bread, so this is what I came up with.

Pull Apart Herb and Garlic Bread

1. Melt 1/4 cup of real butter
2. Add 1 clove minced garlic
3. 1 tsp of fresh or dried herbs. (I used fresh rosemary and parsley)

mix all together.

Lightly grease a bread pan and stand it on it's side.

Pinch off small pieces of dough one at a time and flatten to a disk

1/2" thick and about the size of the palm of your hand.

Dip one side in the butter mixture and lay in pan. Keep making disks and dipping one side in butter layering them like a tower in the pan. I ran out of dough when the tower was almost to the top end of the pan. I put the pan back to it's right position for baking and just shook it and pulled at it abit to make it fit from side to side.

Grate fresh Parmesan cheese on top and let it rise 1/2 hour.

Bake in 40o oven for 25 minutes.

Let it rest in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto rack.

To serve place on a bread board and pull apart at the 'seams'.

Tonight creamy pasta and Caesar salad will be on the menu along with Pull Apart Herb and Garlic Bread.