Meatrolls ~ with pictures

Ok, now I am hooked... I have read meatrolls, meatrolls, meatrolls on almost every page of all the dragon books...
so I decided that I needed to try some...

Read this thread for the background and the original recipe that I posted...
http://forums.srellim.org/showthread...referrerid=767

This is my second attempt at making them... the first ones were good but they disapeared so fast that I didnt get many...

First we need the meat. This is just a hamburger meatloaf mix, but you can use sausage, lamb, or what ever you want... Eggs hold it together... everyone has their own favorite meatloaf recipe...

Your basic "Pizza" dough recipe... water, salt, sugar, yeast, bread flour...
pretty much 1 cup water to 3 cups of flour. still in the bread machine.


Take about 1/3 of it out and make a dough patty...


Roll it out like so...


Then put the meat on the dough...


You'll have to wash your hands after putting the meat on the dough
but if you leave your (clean) hands wet then you will have some water to make the seams stick together as you roll the dough around the meat...

Fold it over...


Then roll it up... tuck in the ends...


In the pan and cut your vents...


Bake about an hour at 350 degrees F. Pour off the grease and let them cool... cut into 4" to 6" lengths...

[Lady Maelin]

WOW!!! Those look delicious I can see why they didn't last too long. I do have one comment though,in the stories they talk about grabbing handfuls of them and shoveing them into their pockets and or bags for a quick trip. So I have always thought of them as the size of Pigs-in-a-blanket, only instead of a small weiner, or sausage...there would be some sort of sausage/meat combo...like you have here. I would love to make some of these some time...they would go great with soup in the winter.
Thank you so much for sharing all of your hard work with the rest of us.

[Hans]

Imagine them a lot smaller, Maelin

Great work, Chris!

Did I mention that you cut them into 4" or 6" lengths?

That might help, but as I was reading "All the Weyrs of Pern" today I did notice something that may change the way I am thinking about "Meatrolls" :

Chapt 16:
"No Meatrolls!" Mirrim said with a dramatic shudder as Sharra reached into the cupboard for some. "I'll puke if I have to eat any more. Thank goodness Master Robinton likes proper bread and sliced meats and raw vegetables."

She is reaching in the cupboard for them? I don't think I would keep these in the cupboard! but maybe I am spoiled with mechanical refridgeration?...

Also I cant find it now but I was reading and someone "grabbed several rounds" ?? so maybe they are more like a meat filled "Roll" like a dinner roll?
bread all the way around.

They are good this way though...

[Greenrider Tresa]

Those look delicious!

[Brenda]

I always thought of them as individual rolls, but those look really good!

[FlameCat]

wow those look good! I think a mixture of meat would be quite good.

[mawra]

The DLGP has a reciepie in it for meat roll (I think) that I want to try one day.
I wonder if instead of fresh meat they use dried or smoked meat that wold have kept longer.

[Hans]

I just finished taking notres on Dragon's Fire and Todd has introduced beef jerky...

[Jayru]

Originally Posted by Hans

I just finished taking notres on Dragon's Fire and Todd has introduced beef jerky...

beef jerky - horrid stuff... although as a child I used to like it It's easy enough to make, so I'm surprised it's not been mentioned on Pern before...

Those meatrolls look yummy chrisfrostic - may have a go at this myself (more baking today). Although, I have to say I have always though of them as being quite small given the way they are referred to in the books.

[edith]

I usually think of them as sausage rolls- make with shortcrust pastry (less messy and easier than flaky- quicker than bread dough too- I can knock out a batch of pastry in a couple of minutes with a fork- its better if you use fingers- but mine are too warm so I use a fork)
I need to finish my fish rolls some time- but I'm not carting a kilo of flour across to to my flat.
Working on the fact that its only recently that we've decided that room temperature is higher than 20 degrees I'd say that food would be less likely to go off in a cupboard- especially if they were kept under one of those muslin things which use evaporation to cool things down.

I think it'd be whatever was lying around at the time.

[Lily]

now: Fish Rolls! We hear very little about them
I visualise the fish mushed up with bread crumbs and seasonings, formed into rolls and baked
What do you think?

[Anareth]

If it is in fact sausage meat, you could keep it without refrigeration, sort of. The whole point of charcuterie is to preserve meats in conditions where you can't keep them cold.

Cutting long rolls would be messy so I assume they're made individually. I would also assume that they are in fact a sausage meat of some variety (about 50-50 lean/fat) because it's more stable than simple ground meat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcuterie

Charcuterie (from either the French chair cuite, cooked meat, or the French cuiseur de chair, cooker of meat) is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as sausage and confit primarily from pork. The practice goes back to ancient times and can involve the chemical preservation of meats; it is also a means of using up various meat scraps. Hams, whether smoked, air-cured, salted, or treated by chemical means, are examples of charcuterie.

The French word for a person who prepares charcuterie is charcutier, and that is generally translated into English as "pork butcher." This has led to the mistaken belief that charcuterie can only involve pork. The Food Lover's Companion, however, says that "it refers to the products, particularly (but not limited to) pork specialties such as pâtés, rillettes, galantines, crépinettes, etc., which are made and sold in a delicatessen-style shop, also called a charcuterie." And the 1961 edition of Larousse Gastronomique defines it as: "The art of preparing various meats, in particular pork, in order to present them in the most diverse ways."

The word can also refer to a delicatessen, a meat shop that specializes in primarily pork products, or that part of a supermarket that specializes in meat products such as hams and sausages.

[Lily]

The Pernese did not use preservatives in any way did they?

[mawra]

I would think that in the colder climets they could have at least smokes some of the meat. Come to think of it in Dragonsong it was mentioned that smoked Yellow fins were good. Or maybe they said dried out. I'll have take a look. They could have used salt also to preseve meat.

[ghyle]

And I don't doubt that they would have fermentation as well. Although, whether they have surstromming is another matter....

[Lily]

They had dragons bring in big blocks of ice to make underground freezing chambers too, didnt they?

we are proving my post up there ^ wrong!

[Brenda]

now: Fish Rolls! We hear very little about them
I visualise the fish mushed up with bread crumbs and seasonings, formed into rolls and baked
What do you think?

I always just figured it was like a meatroll only with fish in it! At Half Circle Seahold that's what would be standard fare - meat would be a rare treat, I would think.

[FlameCat]

mind you there are many different types of fish and some taste very different so it wouldn't be that bad.

Originally Posted by ghyle

And I don't doubt that they would have fermentation as well. Although, whether they have surstromming is another matter....

Fermentation? For sure... Example Bendon Wine, The brewer's cot at bittra hold, so yes Yeast Bread using the "Golden Grain" that is mentioned...

We know they have sweet rolls (donuts)?

Smoked meats would just be a given.. I mean what do you do with a bird the size of an ostridge? (wherry) You cut it into strips and dry it by the fire...
and we know they have fire...

[Anareth]

Uh, yeah, chrisfrostic. *points to Le Cordon Bleu pin* See that? Means I know quite a bit about food. Without Googling or Wiki. (You're in Benzonia, of all places?)

Sweet rolls--I would assume generic term for anything from cinnamon rolls/sticky buns to fried dough treats, just as the filling of meat rolls is undoubtedly made from whatever's lying around and too small to use more efficintly elsewhere.

I would imagine the most popular candidate for air-curing and salt-curing would be fish at the sea holds. Something akin to salt cod, I'm sure, since that's easy to store and use. Where the land animals are concerned, I'm sure they're technologically advanced enough they have smokehouses and niches in the fireplaces and chimneys, without needing to resort to something as primitive as open-fire smoking.

Anareth, with all due respect... Something is wrong with google or wiki? Always helps to back up your ideas with some semblance of fact, though I realize that those are not authoritative sources... And what does Benzonia, have to do with it...? Didn’t see the pin, but now that you point it out... That really was an unexpected response... maybe a nerve exposed or something... my apologies...

It just seemed obvious that there would be fermentation, could not imagine it not, unless there was some biological component of the air that killed all the earth yeast and there was no analogous component...

Modern hamburger and sausage are not necessarily made from scraps, in fact many times we slaughter an animal just to make the sausage or hamburger as that is the desired outcome... especially if we are using it as a staple and need a lot of it... Sausage makers purchase pork shoulder by the ton just for that purpose... Being up here in the north country, the backwoods, the unsophisticated sticks, a lot of my friends take their whole venison that they take when they are out tromping in the woods, chawing on their tobacco, and toting a gun... to the butcher and have the whole thing made into venison burger. so, I agree that at least to start they would use scraps but eventually, and enterprising person would understand that meatrolls were a desired product that could get them good marks in exchange for their effort and use prime cuts as well as scraps and fat (not much fat on a wherry though) to make their meatrolls.

Some of my other unsophisticated, uneducated neighbors up here in Benzonia, MI... (Of course we know nothing of food or the proper way to make a Cordon Bleu...) take their prime cuts of venison, and cure it into jerky rather than making venison burger... Heck, some of my neighbors have an outhouse sized, (now that we have indoor plumbing...) shack that they run cold smoke through to make their venison jerky at home... Doesn't taste too bad either considering that they don't know nuthen about that fancy ham and Swiss food... And I would figure the inhabitants of Pern would be a lot smarter than the hicks that live around here... Heck, Jerky is so easy "even a caveman could do it"...

Chris

[Gidget2]

Originally Posted by chrisfrostic

Modern hamburger and sausage are not necessarily made from scraps, in fact many times we slaughter an animal just to make the sausage or hamburger as that is the desired outcome

LOL Sorry, Chris, but I had to chuckle at this. I know what you're talking about, and as a country man myself I appreciate well-raised and well-butchered meat. However, to many, many people the meat that is in burgers is that which comes out of McDonalds. I think we can assume that their meat is not anywhere near "prime" or "specific" (unless you count eyeholes, earholes and ***holes as specific!). It's meat only in the context that it was once part of an animal.

With regard to sausages, apart from buying high-quality sausage meat, the general ....... rubbish that gets put into sausages in this country (UK) doesn't particularly inspire nutritional confidence (that's after you take out the often over 50% filler content of bread or other mash).

Incidentally, back up to the person who mentioned somebody in the books grabbing several rounds of meat rolls. I took that to mean 'round' in the sense of "a serving to each of a group" (generally used here in the context of buying a load of drinks for a group - "my round/get the round in/another round").

I see meat rolls as being, as the other Brits have mentioned, like our sausage rolls. In that case they would be kind of cylindrical in shape. So perhaps round there too!

You know, that does make sense... the rounds (several rounds.. like for the group) part... because I made some more the other day trying to make them round and they just were not as good... too much dough and not as easy or quick to make... I think I will keep making them the way I did when I did the pictures... cause I can turn out a bunch in a hurry and they stay together wlll when cold, and don't make a mess... and taste good too... which I think is the point when your trying to feed a crew...

[Brenda]

I don't remember where I first read the saying, "Sausage is where the butcher hides his mistakes..."

Basically all the scraps.

[Hans]

So in bygone times they just essentuiially put the sh*t back in the gut, right?

[Lady Maelin]

Hans... Yes indeedy my friend...that's what I was told too they just shove it right back in...after they chop it into tiny little pieces

[Gidget2]

Originally Posted by Hans

So in bygone times they just essentuiially put the sh*t back in the gut, right?

Nice way with words, Hans! And not so bygone, either!

I don't know how prevalent the company Walls is in America, but in the UK they are well known for making sausages and ice cream. Which is an odd combination when you think about it. But Mr. Walls needed a product to use up all the icky rendered fat that was left over after his sausage production. And a lovely thick tasty ice cream was born .........

(Should I put "allegedly" in case of legal action? LOL)

[Lady Maelin]

Gidget, OOOOOOOOOOOH YUCK , and I just ate ice cream for desert...!!!

[Gidget2]

LOL Sorry Lady M

[P'ter]

Lady M: 2 of the other commen ingredients of "ice cream" are fish oil and seaweed gum.

[FlameCat]

mmm... I always hated Walls icecream

[edith]

Originally Posted by chrisfrostic

You know, that does make sense... the rounds (several rounds.. like for the group) part... because I made some more the other day trying to make them round and they just were not as good... too much dough and not as easy or quick to make... I think I will keep making them the way I did when I did the pictures... cause I can turn out a bunch in a hurry and they stay together wlll when cold, and don't make a mess... and taste good too... which I think is the point when your trying to feed a crew...

you do hear rounds of bread- just a slice I think

[L'isa]

Okay, all this food talk. I am just going to have to have some lunch!

[FlameCat]

or rounds - just loads to pass round so loads of people can have them. I don't think it refers to shape. eg: a round of beers? etc..
so it could be small sausage roll things a couple of inches long?..

[Lady Maelin]

Peter, well thank you very much...I think I will leave off of anymore ice cream for a while....YUCK, YUCK, YUCK ....!!!!

P.S. Do you ever wonder how the Genuis's came up with such a tasty treat, when they started out with such yucky food groups...

[Lady Maelin]

L'isa, how could you think of eating anything after hearing what's in the ice cream....my stomach is still turning

[Sandi]

It isn't in all of them. Being somewhat allergic to that seaweed gunk, I read the labels carefully. There's one called Breyers that has a line of ice cream made from milk and cream and sugar (imagine that!) and I think there are a couple of other brands as well.

[Gidget2]

And anyone in the UK or anywhere that sells Skinny Cow brand 'ice cream' is possibly the worst one inasmuch that it has pretty much no cream or ice and is virtually all cr@p!