Grandma Huber's Gouluster

By rom8v38and39

David's pressure cooker variation. - -
In the photo Great Grandma Huber and our Grandma Manzer whom we pirated the recipe from.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2-3 lbs ground pork
• 3/8 cup uncooked rice
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 3/8 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 large head cabbage or very small head
• 1 16 oz pkg sauerkraut w/juice
• 6 oz beer
• 10 oz water
• 1/2 Tablespoon Better Than Bouillon chicken base
• 1/2 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon beef base

Details

Servings 4

Preparation

Step 1

Combine pork, rice, seasonings, & onion. Form into large balls (~3/4 cup). Cut cabbage quarters in 3/8 to 1/2 inch slices. Alternate layers of cabbage, sauerkraut, and pork balls. Add mixed sauerkraut juice, beer, water, and Bouillon base.

Lock lid, 25 minutes at 15psi, natural release. If using a stock pot simmer for approximately 2½ hours, until pork is cooked through.

Note: I don't think that you need the water with a pressure cooker, it doesn't hurt. The original recipe was for a stockpot so it needed that much water. I never reduced the liquids when I cooked it in the pressure cooker.

---------------------------------------

This is a recipe my German grandmother learned from her mother while learning to cook. In our family it was the equivalent of tamales in the Hispanic community, much loved but seldom seen other than the holidays.

My dear Auntie Irene wanted to know how to make Gouluster and got the usual answer of that era you take the pork and add garlic salt, onion salt and pepper mix it together then cook a bit of it in a skillet to see if you have the seasonings right, add what you need and retest.

Well Auntie came up with a plan, when Grandma did any thing she would take it from Grandma and pass it to my sister to measure, and I would record the process. Thus the family got the Gouluster recipe.

About 15 years ago we noticed that Gouluster just didn't taste the old way of Grandma's Gouluster. We finally decided we couldn't duplicate the taste after the pork producers made pork "the other white meat". We have played with different techniques such as adding Italian sausage or what my wife and I tried, having the butcher add additional fat when grinding our batch of pork. Until an internet conversation the idea of adding stock to the cooking liquids, My wife and I like the combination of chicken and beef stock.

Any internet search results you find seem to be a result of my original posting here on Pressure Cooker Recipes (because of some quirks in that post). I even found a lamb based recipe that was identical except for the substitution of the lamb.


(c)2017 david h