Murray's Kreplach, The New Old-Fashioned Way

I posted the recipe for Murray's Famous Chicken-Beef Kreplach almost two years ago. Although I incorporated some of my father-in-law's seasoning suggestions when I made žlikrofi, the Slovenian version of the dish, I had never actually followed his complete recipe.

Murray's recipe is labor intensive. It begins with poaching the chicken and stewing the beef. No shortcuts in this recipe, so I would have to devote an entire day to making kreplach.

I needed something else: a hand-cranked meat grinder, to replace the one my mother had passed along to me. She had used it to prepare the meat filling for her own version of kreplach, which was probably based on the Slovenian žlikrofi my grandmother made. Sadly, I had lost track of that old treasure. So I was on the lookout for a new one. I did find one old meat grinder at a fancy antique store, but I balked at the thirty-five dollar price tag.

Finally, about a month ago, I wandered into a yard sale down the block. And there it was: A hand-cranked meat grinder. Old, a little rusty, but with all the parts. A bargain at six dollars.

The time for Murray's Kreplach had arrived.

I made just a few changes in Murray's recipe. The biggest one? No added salt. To compensate, I increased the other seasonings. I also used oil instead of chicken fat. Since the original recipe is quite large, I cut the quantities in half.

The detailed recipe follows, along with step-by-step photos.

But first, let's cut to the chase:  Was it worth it?

The answer: Yes, without question. I had no idea how good this would be. Even without the salt, the meat filling was rich and full of flavor.  It had the deep, earthy tang of chopped liver. I could swear someone had slipped in some schmaltz (chicken fat) when I wasn't looking.

The secret is in the step that Murray calls "making potted beef." Plenty of well-browned onion and a generous hand with the flour and fat leaves you with a rich, flavorful gravy that gets added to the meat filling at the end. Do not skip this step!

Despite some healthy changes (no salt, oil instead of chicken fat) this is not diet food.  But kreplach are meant to be a ceremonial dish, filled with love and family and memories of the past.  Murray's mother Rose Tabak (who was born in Poland) made them every Rosh Hashanah and distributed them to her children and grandchildren as a New Year's gift.  Once or twice a year, I figure we can follow her example and do it up right.

Murray's Chicken-Beef Kreplach

Ingredients

Filling:

4 oz. boneless chicken breasts, poached

1 lb.  boneless beef chuck or beef stew meat

1-2 T. flour to coat the beef

1-1/4 c. chopped onions
1-2 T. oil to brown onions (or use the traditional choice: chicken fat!)

1-2 cloves garlic

1/4 t. paprika, with more added to taste

2 T. fresh parsley, with more added to taste

black pepper to taste
salt-free seasoning mix to taste (or use salt)

Dough:

1- 3/4 c. all purpose flour

2 eggs, beaten

1  T. oil
water, as needed 

Instructions for filling:

Poach chicken breasts in water seasoned with pepper and a little minced garlic. I added some onion and a bay leaf. Drain and chill. (Save the liquid for soup!)

Murray refers to this next step as "making potted beef." Cut beef in cubes, coat with flour, and brown on all sides in oil or chicken fat. Remove beef from pan. Using the same pan, brown the onion, adding more oil or fat if needed. When onions are well browned, add beef back to pan. Add 1/2 inch of water, along with pepper, paprika, parsley, garlic and salt-free seasoning mix or (if desired) salt.  Cover and simmer on low heat, adding more liquid if needed, for about an hour, or until beef is tender. Remove from pan and chill. Be sure to save the onion-sauce mix that remains in the pan.

Cut the chilled chicken into chunks. Use a meat grinder (or, if you must, a food processor) to chop the chicken finely. Set aside in a bowl.

Place the chilled beef cubes into meat grinder (or food processor) and chop or grind finely.

Combine chopped beef, chopped chicken and the onion-sauce mixture that is left over from potting the beef. If filling doesn't hold together, you can add additional oil or breadcrumbs, but I didn't need either of those. The filling should be strongly flavored, with a texture that is something like a raw meatball mixture, according to Murray. I found to be more like a firm spread that reminded me of chopped liver, in both the texture and the rich, deep flavor. Since the meat is already cooked, you are free to taste and adjust the seasonings.  Because my version was salt-free, I increased the other seasonings.

Instructions for dough, shaping, and final preparation:

The original recipe suggests using a food processor to mix the dough and a pasta machine for rolling it out.  But I opted for the old-fashioned approach: mixing and rolling by hand. 

For a reminder on how to make egg noodle dough, go here.

Roll the dough into a thin square that is roughly 18 x 18 inches. Cut into three-inch squares. Put a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of each square. To shape, I used the simple, traditional approach I learned from my mother:  Fold the square into a triangle and crimp the edges with a fork. (Murray's original recipe, as well as many Slovenian recipes, involve a more complex tortellini shape.)

I ended up with 32 kreplach. Bring a large pot of water to boil and drop in kreplach. When they rise to the top, reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Drain. Coat with a little oil and keep warm.

There are many ways to serve kreplach. In chicken broth. Plain, topped with a little parsley and browned onions. Garnished with ajvar and Greek yogurt.  Even fried.

With Murray's kreplach, you can't go wrong!

Murray

 

Making Potted Beef

Grinding Chicken

Ground Beef and Chicken

Shaping the Kreplach

Finished Kreplach

Murray's Famous Chicken-Beef Kreplach

Kreplach or Zlikrofi?

So what is kreplach, a traditional Jewish dumpling, doing in a Slovenian food blog?

If you have read my recent posts about Slovenian zlikrofi, especially here, you already know part of the answer.

The two dishes are so similar that you could easily mistake one for the other. In fact, my mother often referred to her meat-filled dumplings as kreplach. She probably figured it sounded more American than zlikrofi!

There is another reason for sharing this. Murray's Kreplach is also a family recipe. But it's from my husband's side of the family.

Murray Tabak is my father-in-law. As a boy, he used to watch his Polish-born mother hard at work in the kitchen. He went on to become a fine cook himself. Luckily, he had the foresight to preserve some of his mother's prized dishes. He watched her, asked questions, and made notes. The result was a handful of traditional Jewish recipes. This is one of them. Every fall, Grandma Rose used to make a big batch of kreplach and then deliver them, a couple dozen to each household, to her five children and their families for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Rose, my husband's grandmother, cooked from memory and feeling. Just like my own grandmother, she lived through hard times and had the knack for doing a lot with very little. Her kreplach, like Slovenian zlikrofi, are labor intensive.

The filling uses two kinds of meat, chicken and beef, each cooked separately and then ground or chopped in a food processor. The shape is also more complicated that my mother's simple wonton triangles. There is a second step here: Pinching two corners of the triangle together, so they resemble tortellini.

During a recent visit, my father-in-law proudly showed us a printed version of his recipe, dubbed Murray's Kreplach, in a 1988 cookbook called "Almost All My Secrets: Recipes from the Bakery." This cookbook, probably self-published, was the creation of Deborah Davidson, who used to own a bakery in New York's Westchester County. The cookbook is out of print, the bakery no longer exists, and Murray moved to Florida and lost touch with the baker-author. So I saw this as one more vintage cookbook that helped preserve a piece of the past.

Except for one small problem. The cookbook got it wrong.

This came to light during a subsequent visit,  just after I had posted the first version of this recipe. When I showed Murray the blog entry, he was pleased and started to read it. Then he took a closer look.

I had the proportions of beef and pork reversed, Murray said. So I went to my original source, the cookbook he'd shown me. She got it wrong too. The filling was supposed to be mostly beef and just a little chicken, in a ratio of about 4:1.

In the recipe below, I have made the correction. I also specify chicken breasts, since Murray's mother used white meat only. And I have substituted fresh herbs for dried.  

Murray also agreed with me: The instructions in the cookbook were too detailed. In fact, his observation was a little more pungent: Anyone who needed every step spelled out had no business even attempting such an ambitious recipe!

For the filling, I have simplified the directions even more and put them into my own language.

When it comes to the dough, I offer only brief instructions.

The cookbook version gives detailed directions for using a pasta machine. I no longer own one of those, and I have happily returned to the old-fashioned hand-rolled approach, at least for making noodles and dumplings. If you would like to find instructions for using a pasta machine, I am sure you can.  For a reminder on how to make noodles by hand, you can look back at my zlikrofi recipe.

I have given the ingredients for the dough, to give an idea of the quantities in this very large recipe. Unlike the Slovenian egg noodle dough,  this recipe includes a little oil, but no salt. Oil is supposed to make pasta dough more supple and elastic. I'm not sure how much difference it makes. The Slovenian recipes, and some kreplach recipes, skip the oil.  So it's up to you.



Murray's Chicken-Beef Kreplach

Ingredients

Filling:

8 oz. boneless chicken breasts
2 lb.  boneless beef chuck
2 T. flour
2 1/2 c. chopped onions
2 T. chicken fat
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 t. paprika
2 T. fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
additional chicken fat if needed

Dough:

3 1/2 c. all purpose flour
4 eggs, beaten
2  T. oil


Instructions for filling:

Poach chicken breasts in water seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little minced garlic. Drain. Murray, his mother, and my mother all used hand grinders. If you use a food processor, be careful to chop coarsely. You don't want a paste! Refrigerate.

Murray refers to this next step as "making potted beef." Cut beef in cubes, coat with flour, and brown on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Using the same pan, brown the onion in 2 T. chicken fat. When brown, add beef back to pan. Add 1/2 inch of water, along with salt, pepper, paprika, parsley, and garlic. Cover and simmer on low heat, adding more liquid if needed. When beef is tender, remove from pan and grind or chop coarsely in food processor.

Combine chopped beef, chopped chicken and whatever remains in the pan. If needed, add up to 2 T. additional melted chicken fat, both for flavor and to hold the filling together. Taste and adjust seasoning. Filling should taste somewhat salty.

Murray notes that the texture of the filling should be something like ground meat, as though you were making meat balls. Also, to make a lower fat version, you could omit the chicken fat and use additional browned onions. If the filling seems too soft, add some bread crumbs.


Instructions for dough, shaping, and final preparation:

The original recipe suggests using a a food processor to mix the dough and a pasta machine for rolling it out. If you use a pasta machine, divide into 4 portions. You should end up at the thinnest setting. Or you can follow the old-fashioned approach: mixing and rolling by hand!

Either way, cut the thin sheets of dough into 3 x 3 inch squares. Put a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center. Here is where things change a little: The Murray Method is to moisten the edges of the square before folding into a triangle. The edges are simply pressed together. Then, the final step: Two points of the triangle are joined and pressed together. The finished product should look like tortellini.

Ultimately, the shape doesn't define the dish. I have read about Slovenian zlikrofi that are shaped the very same way, and I have enjoyed kreplach that are simple triangles. Again, it is your choice.

To prepare: Cook in boiling salted water, a few at a time, and "cook until they rise to the top of the water." Remove and drain. The printed recipe suggests that the kreplach should be coated in oil or melted chicken fat to store. They can also be frozen and then simmered for five minutes in soup or broth.

Serve in soup or on their own.

Enjoy!


Update: Two years later, I finally made Murray's kreplach. Even with a few healthy modifications (no salt, oil instead of chicken fat) it was wonderful!  For details, go here.