You might have heard of Apple or other fruit strudels, but a zesty cabbage strudel? Yes its possible and absolutely delicious. You can actually put any vegetable into a strudel, just cook it with some onion, garlic, butter, seasoning, herbs, roll it up, bake and serve it as the veggie part of your dish or for the vegetarian serve it with a tomato sugo or pepper sauce. I like mushroom strudel with Tomato sugo!

I serve the Krautstrudel either plain as is or together with lightly smoked pork chops and mashed potatoes. I bet some kind of mustard sauce might be good with that, I will have to experiment with that next time.

Ingredients:

For the Strudel dough:

• 50gr butter
• 250 gr flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon oil

For the Kraut/Cabbage filling

• 1 large white cabbage
• 1 onion
• 150 gram bacon (leave out if you are making it a vegetarian strudel)
• 50gr butter
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
• salt and pepper

Directions:

for the strudel dough:  

1. Melt the butter and mix with the flour, salt and 125ml water, approximately 10 minutes. You want to have a really elastic dough. If the dough is too stiff, add a little bit more butter. Form a round ball, place it in a dish, brush some oil over it and cover in foil. Let the dough rest, at least 30 minutes.

For the filling:

1. Cut the cabbage into quarters and then into small strips. Chop the onions and the bacon into small cubes.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a big pot on medium heat and first brown the bacon, then add the onions. Add the chopped cabbage and 1/2 a tablespoon of the caraway seats. Steam/cook for 5 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
3. Grab a really big kitchen towel, spread it out on your work surface and flour it. Now roll out the dough as thin as possible. I first roll it into a square and then I pull the dough over the back of my hands into a big square. The dough should be very elastic and you can stretch the dough carefully over the back of your hands and forearms. Cut off the thicker sides with a pizza cutter.
4. Brush the rest of the butter onto the dough. Then spread the cabbage filling onto the dough and roll up the strudel with the help of the towel from the long side.
5. Preheat  the oven to 400 degrees. Use your towel to move the strudel over to a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper), seam should be on the bottom of the baking sheet. Top the strudel with the rest of the Caraway seeds and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

Guten Appetit!