This year's holupture. Wish I could share it with you!
I've learned a few things since I made it that Thanksgiving and it really made a difference in the taste.
One thing I learned is that consistency in size is quite important. We have foreign workers from Moldova and we were invited to their house for an evening meal. It was awesome. So much food we couldn't even taste it all. BUT. They served holupture. Yup. It didn't really surprise me but they were very surprised that we knew what it was. Anyway each piece of holupture was the same size.
Then I went to my own source of information on the subject. DH. He is the one whose family has this as a tradition and so he is the closest thing to a pro as I can get these days.
He told me that to cook it early and let it marinate in the sauerkraut for as long as possible is the best thing to do.
And so here is what was done.
2nd DDIL and I made the holupture on Saturday evening. The recipe was the same as before but if the cabbage leaves were too big we cut them in halves or quarters to make the rolls more even in size.
We arranged them in my bigger crock pot and dumped 2 large jars of sauerkraut on top. I started it out on high for a couple hours and before bed I turned it down to low.
It cooked overnight until about 9 in the morning. I tested the rice to make sure it was cooked through.
Since we live in ND and it's cold here, I put the crock pot in the garage to keep cold and not have to use up refrigerator space on the big crock. I left the sauerkraut on top and didn't drain any liquid off.
The holupture stayed in the garage for 2 days and on Tuesday I removed the sauerkraut and put the crock pot back in the heating unit to warm it up for dinner.
It was delicious. DH said we could have even put another jar of sauerkraut on top. He remembered his gramma's being stronger tasting but he said this was a very close second.
And now I know how to make the holupture as tasty as possible. Start early. Let it sit and marinate for a couple days after cooking it and use lots of sauerkraut.
It was so good tasting and also heartwarming to have hit on the right combination to get the end result as close as possible to Gramma Lora Stein's recipe.
