Baby’s First Solo Holupchy Flight Part 1

Baby’s First Holupchy   Flying Solo

It's potluck time! I'm not even sure how I came up with the idea this time around. I think part of it was the desire  to use the crock pot, and that we just recently had holupchy at the local Polish restaurant and it was pretty darn good.  Of course mom said she preferred her own, and doesn’t like the tomato sauce on it so much.  She prefers using a vegetable juice mostly just to keep it from burning.  It was hard to keep it from being bland.  I think I need even more spices, and perhaps a bit more variety.  I wonder if it would help to cook the onions WITH the meat.  Though next time I’d plan on lentils and mushrooms and either minimal meat or replacing it all together.  Perhaps losing the rice too, trading for barley maybe? I did just get some.  I seem to find that vegetarians have a tendency of having a more thorough knowledge of spicing and flavoring items.

So I think I had always wanted to try lazy holupchy.  The weird thing is, I guess people think the rolling is where all the work is… I don’t find that to be the case- I think the meat and rice are pretty time consuming.  Followed by the brief boiling of cabbage…. And the rolling is actually fun!  So while I might still try it some time, maybe putting everything in the crockpot at once… there is a certain joy in the rolling.  It’s not like pirohi where you have to pray they stay closed and it’s so much patchkeninah….oh transliteration….

If I can get more used to the crockpot for healthy uses, and it can really all be done in a dump everything format, then it would make sense...because it’s not as though you eat it like a burrito anyway, once you cut and apply forkage, it’s being all the same anyhow.  If anything the lazy one may even distribute flavors more evenly.  

I guess I’ll walk through my process.   First it was the onions.  Ohhhh did they hurt my bare eyes!  I don’t know where I got it in my head that for Vitamix chopping, it had to be wet chopped…. Thankfully I re-researched and it’s perfectly dry-choppable.  I seem to forget this regularly.  I also need to reacquaint myself with  using and saving the onion skins.  Apparently they can be used to make stock.  I always feel bad throwing them out.  And the first layer of onion as well, it’s kind of papery, I feel like it’s not good to use, it’s annoying when onion rings are made of it and it’s just a waste...but to make it into stock!  Ah HA!   So, lots of chopping, and thankfully I had done the crockpot caramelizing of onions previously so I knew it worked!  I do NOT know why the remaining broth is SOOOO yummy!!!  Especially since I’m not a fan of french onion soup, and that’s what it ends up being as far as I’m aware.  

It’s amazing after 9 hours, what a difference 2 more hours makes.    I was told they were getting mushy and should be crunchy…. But to me flavor is more important.  I realize she’s all about “the crunch” with foods…. But to me flavor is everything!  And the whole point of caramelizing onions!  

Next was the ground beef.  This may be my first time cooking ground beef.  There was a lot of liquid at the end- I thought it was all fat- turns out a lot of juice as well, TASTY juice!  So that got added to the rice after and while I tried sampling it to make sure it was a good idea, hopefully no sorcery takes place and makes that less pleasant, because I’m telling you, with a bit of that juice added… YUM!!!  Isn’t that the same as the “au jus” that comes with those sandwiches?  I mean…. I didn’t take French but isn’t that just “with juice?”  

I did read that slow cookers do well with dried herbs.  So even though I don’t expect the parsley to be of the utmost quality it seems things become revived in the crockpot….and from what I could tell, tasted YUMMOS!!!