What's a Runza?

The Davises Eat: Runzas! episode explores this Nebraska stable along with another creation, Kool-Aid.

If you have visited the far western part of the Midwest and on into Nebraska, you may have encountered the runza. If not, this meaty dish is likely foreign to you. It goes by many names - bierock, kraut burger, fleisch kuche (meat cake), or kraut pirok. Whatever you call it, the runza is a savory dish worth getting to know. 

Part of the Nebraskan regional cuisine, the runza is a meat pie - a yeast-bread pocket filled with ground beef, cabbage or sauerkraut, onions, and simple seasoning. Less traditional recipes call for cheddar or mozzarella cheese. While the terms runza and bierock are used to describe the same basic dish, there is a difference. Runzas are rectangular while bierocks are typically circular. Runzas are large, too… big enough to eat like a sandwich.  

Watch The Davises Eat: Runzas! episode to see how we made them.

A Brief Runza Origin Story 

Like many regional foods in America, the Runza has been remade and reimagined from traditional fare. Food historians generally credit the Eastern European pierogi (a dumpling filled with savory ingredients) and the more similar Russian pirozhki. 

Let’s start at the beginning of this tale when Catherine the Great, German-born Empress of Russia, invited Germans to relocate to Russia along the Volga River in 1760. Known later as Volga Germans, many took advantage of her numerous promises and migrated. 

The Volga Germans were allowed to maintain their culture - their food, traditions, and religious beliefs. While they lived mostly separate from Russians, they did learn of the pirozhki and adapted it to create the bierock. Why the meat pies were called bierocks is a bit of a mystery. Some believe the word is a derivative of the Russian pirog¹, but a more recent theory points to the word börek. Either way, I’m happy they found their way to the Midwest!

The Move to the Midwest 

By the late 19th century, all of Catherine the Great’s promises were slowly eroding and Volga Germans found themselves being forced to culturally assimilate. By 1900, nearly 100,000 immigrated to the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska. As all immigrants have, they brought their recipes along. 

The daughter of a Volga German immigrant, Sarah “Sally” Everett is credited for remaking the bierock and giving the runza its name. In 1949, she and her brother, Alex Brening opened the first Runza Drive-Inn restaurant in Lincoln, Nebraska with about $500.²

According to Everett family lore, Sally learned to make the runza from her mother on a farm near Sutton, Nebraska. Today, there are 85 Runza locations, 80 of which are in Nebraska. 

Many cultures have some variation of a meat hand pie, but the runza seems to have a bit of a cult following - at least in Nebraska. At any given Nebraska Cornhuskers home football game, as many as 15,000 handmade runzas are eaten. One could say that the Nebraskan descendants of Russian Germans appreciate this simple meat hand pie they call their own.