Ingredients
Units
Scale
- Filling:
- 1 3/4 pounds boneless chuck or brisket
- 2 – 3 cooked chicken livers or 1 turkey liver
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 small bunch of dill
- 4 large onions, 3 minced fine and one cut into slices
- 1 bottle dry red wine
- About 1/2 cup (possibly more) of melted chicken fat, aka schmaltz (Canola oil is a barely acceptable substitute)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- ***
- Dough:
- 2 cups flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- For the filling: Place the meat, dill, carrots, celery and the sliced onion in a large Dutch oven. Add the bottle of red wine and cook in the oven, covered, until the meat is fork tender, about 1 ½ hours. Remove the meat from the oven and let it cool.
- Fry the liver(s) in a pan with some oil until cooked through.
- In the same pan you cooked the liver(s), heat the schmaltz and add the onion. Fry until the onions are deep golden brown.
- Chop the cooled meat and liver into large pieces that will fit into the spout of a meat grinder, reserve the brisket juices from the pan.
- Using the meat grinder, alternate grinding the meat and cooked vegetables from the pot with the caramelized onion mixture (with the fat/oil) until it has all been ground together. Taste the mixture, and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper and some of the reserved meat and wine juices from the brisket.
- Dough:
- Measure out the flour onto the work surface. Make a well and put in the eggs and salt. Mix by working the flour into the eggs with your fingers.
- Knead the dough, adding flour until it feels like your earlobe. This is the perfect texture for kreplach noodle dough.
- Cover the dough, to keep it from drying, and let it rest for a half hour.
- Now, I have never, ever made the right amount of dough for the amount of filling I’ve prepared. The solution is either to make more dough or freeze the filling for another time.
- Put up a large pot of slightly salted water to boil.
- So, after the dough has rested, take a portion and roll it out on a floured board. It should be rolled as thinly as possible. The dough is very elastic and requires a bit of work, but you should work at it until it is very thin; almost translucent. (The dough still in reserve should continue to be kept covered.)
- With a very sharp knife, cut the dough into rectangles of about 2 to 2 ½ inches.
- Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each rectangle. For each, fold the rectangle into a triangle, over the filling. Seal the edges tightly. (If they open during cooking, all the filling will be lost into the water.) If need be, slightly moisten your fingers with water and crimp the edges well.
- Take the two points of the triangle at the sides, pull them behind the folded-up edge, and pinch them together to form a little circle of dough. Drop in the boiling water and cook for 15-20 minutes. (Prepare the next batch while this one is cooking.)
- Remove with a slotted spoon and drain thoroughly before storing or dropping into soup.
- Prep Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
