Ground Beef and Cabbage Filling for Pockets

I have already posted two new portable food recipes this week, Flourless Nut Butter Cookies and Fruit Juice Gelatin, both of which my husband has greatly appreciated. I have not always been the best at sending interesting things to work with him, so this is a very nice change for him. As my final contribution to the Nourishing Portable Food Carnival (happening tomorrow, the 27th! I am looking forward to your contributions!), I was going to share a more “main dish” idea.

Many a wife sent a husband to work in certain time periods with a little “pocket” of food. She would roll out some of her bread dough and tuck a little meat and veggies in it, perhaps leftovers from last night’s stew, and bake it in her oven for a freshly made lunch each morning. Sometimes she would even put meat and veggies on one side, press down the middle and put fruit on the other for a whole package deal.

Continuing in that tradition, this recipe was inspired from a few Russian cookbooks that I have been reading. They also have many little pocket foods, and so, have many traditional recipes for fillings and doughs. From what I can tell, they didn’t usually mix their meat and vegetables, but I didn’t want to have to make two separate recipes. To avoid that, I combined two of the filling ideas for a meat and cabbage filling. It’s surprisingly flavorful for such a simple recipe. It would also make a great simple and easy dinner just served over rice, with soy sauce added at the table.

Because this is a little more labor intensive than a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I froze most of my recipe (we had some for dinner one night). I take out two the night before I plan on sending them with Joel and let them defrost in the refrigerate overnight. While my husband doesn’t tend to like things cold, he actually thinks these taste great cold (yeah!), so he doesn’t even have to worry about re-heating them. I also wanted to mention that this a fairly frugal meat lunch, especially when you compare it to lunch meats.

I made a sourdough dough that worked wonderfully for this recipe, but I want to test it out a little more before I share it. Meanwhile, you can really make pockets out of most doughs.
You can certainly even just use your bread dough. Just roll it about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. You can also use more rich doughs, like the cracker ones on this site. Meanwhile, here is the filling (remember that you also use this “filling” as a topping for rice for a simple dinner!)

Ground Beef and Cabbage Filling -Enough filling for 16 pockets with leftovers

Prepare a dough using about 3 cups of flour (enough dough for one loaf of bread)

2 onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil, lard, tallow, or butter
1 pound of ground hamburger
A half of a cabbage, washed and thinly sliced
salt and pepper

1-In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the onions. Stir occasionally and continue to cook until the onions are soft (but don’t brown them to much).

2-Then add the hamburger and cabbage together, cooking until the hamburger is all the way cooked and the cabbage is soft. Salt and pepper to taste

Now you can serve over rice for a simple dinner, or you can stuff into dough for little bread pockets. To do this divide your dough into about 16 pieces. Roll them out into small circles and place a few tablespoon on one half (made sure you use a slotted spoon to drain any excess liquid from the filling! It would make your pocket soggy!). Fold over the other half and press down to seal. In a preheated oven of 400 degrees bake your pockets until they are lightly brown, top and bottom. Mine, being a sourdough, took a little longer than some doughs and finished in around 30 minutes. Serve right away hot, or send cold in lunches.