This Is Not a Runza
The recipe Big Bierock doesn’t want you to have
Omaha’s best sushi chef gets ideas from Burger King. “I’m kind of obsessed with fast food,” says David Utterback, who became Nebraska’s first-ever finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Best Chef award in 2023. “We talk a lot about it at my omakase counter”—Ota, a $265-a-head experience recently written up in the Washington Post—”because it’s something almost everyone has in common.”
Some of the sushi rolls and steamed buns on the more casual menus at Yoshitomo and Koji started with attempts to recreate fast-food flavor profiles. “When people crave something, they don’t crave consommé,” he says. “They crave big, bold flavors.”
That inspiration became a problem last year, when the Lincoln, Nebraska-based fast-food chain Runza sent him a cease-and-desist over a bun he called the Ranza, stuffed with beef and cabbage in tribute to the chain’s namesake specialty.
“It was a shock, and a little bit funny, but at the same time, scary,” Utterback says. “We have two forty-seat restaurants that probably, combined, generate less profit than one Runza location. Something like that has very real potential to bury us, if we have to pay lawyers’ fees, restitution, etcetera.”
A runza is a yeast roll with filling—most often ground beef, cabbage, and onion. It descends from the Hot Pocket-like bierock, one of the plain and hearty dishes that Volga German immigrants brought to the Midwest in the late 1800s.
While Runza didn’t invent the dish, the chain, which has ninety-some locations, most in Nebraska, has maintained a legal claim on the name since filing it with the state in 1950.
On the advice of a lawyer, Utterback renamed the bun—changing Ranza to Bunza and then, after an Instagram follower reported that Runza had sent a cease-and-desist to Lincoln’s public schools for using that name, to Bunzai, to be safe.
“Since then, we haven’t heard anything,” Utterback says. “I still worry that something is going to come in the mail saying, ‘Yeah, that didn’t satisfy us. We’ll see you in court.’ But I assume it’s behind us.” Ironically, he says, he was starting to think about taking the bun off the menu when the cease-and-desist made it a story and boosted its popularity. “I was going to pull it as part of a normal menu refresh, but now it’s on forever,” he says. “They’ve sealed the deal.”
Adaptation has always been a fact of life for the Bellevue, Nebraska-raised chef. His Japanese mother, Hiroko, made sweet-and-sour sauce from ketchup and crushed pineapple. “She didn’t really learn to cook in Japan,” Utterback says. “She learned after she moved to the U.S. to be with my dad,” an Iowa native named Terry who she met when he was stationed in Okinawa. “She didn’t have Japanese ladies to hang out with, but she would swap recipes with the other Asian wives, who were Thai, Vietnamese, Korean… Egg rolls aren’t a Japanese staple, but my mom made crazy good egg rolls, using the ingredients she could get.”
Working in Nebraska, Utterback feels like he has room to develop his own style. “In Omaha, I have no one telling me, ‘You can’t do that. That’s not how it’s done,’” he says. “I can do whatever I want! It’s amazing.” He has developed relationships with some of Japan’s most respected fish vendors, which sets him apart from most U.S. sushi chefs from the moment of delivery, but he also serves a crab rangoon-inspired sushi roll with his version of his mom’s pineapple sweet-and-sour sauce on top.
This “super dumb” (in Utterback’s words) take on a Nebraska classic, umami-boosted with Japanese Hondashi powder and smothered in American cheese, owes as much to Hamburger Helper as to the state’s favorite fast-food joint. Utterback wants you to make it even dumber by steaming Pillsbury biscuits to make the bun, a hack he found on Google while planning a pop-up. “I am not a dough person,” he says. “I don’t have the patience. If there’s a hack or a cheat to get me to the end, I’m going to take it.”
This is not a runza, and it’s not the high-end, Japanese-sourced fare Utterback serves at Ota. It is a creative, resourceful, and undeniably satisfying adaptation, with ingredients you can find at pretty much any Midwestern supermarket.
Bunzai
Adapted from David Utterback, Koji, Omaha
Makes 10 buns, serving 6-8 as an appetizer or 2-4 as a meal
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
You should be able to find frozen gua bao at your local Asian supermarket. For the canned-biscuit version, look for standard-sized biscuits—not Pillsbury Grands or other jumbo biscuits—without added butter flavor.
The one ingredient you might not be able to find at a supermarket near you is Hondashi, an umami-rich dashi concentrate in powder form. If the Hondashi is an issue, you can substitute a pinch of MSG. If you don’t have MSG, try a splash of soy sauce. The filling won’t be quite as delicious, but it may be closer to its simple Volga German origin.
Ingredients
1 can buttermilk biscuits, such as Pillsbury Flaky Layers Buttermilk Biscuits, or 10 frozen gua bao
1 tbsp. neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed oil
1 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt or ½ tsp. Morton (3g), plus more to taste
1¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
¼ tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Hondashi
1 lb. (454g) ground beef, preferably 80% lean
1 small yellow onion (227g), diced
¼ medium head green cabbage (325g), cored and sliced thin (about 1 quart)
5 slices yellow or white American cheese, torn into pieces
Preparation
For traditional steamed buns, follow the instructions on the package.
For the biscuit method: Remove biscuits from can. Roll and/or press each biscuit into a roughly 3-by-6-inch oval. Use a pastry brush to apply the thinnest layer of oil possible to the top of each biscuit, then fold it in half. Place rolled and folded biscuits in steamer, spacing them at least 1 inch apart, and steam for 10 minutes, or until dough has risen and set.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Hondashi. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat and add beef. Break beef up with a wooden spoon and season with half the spice blend. Cook, continuing to work the beef with your spoon, until beef is no longer pink, about 5 minutes.
Add onions and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently to ensure even cooking. Then add cabbage and the rest of the spice blend and cook until cabbage is translucent and limp, 5-10 more minutes, continuing to stir frequently. (If the contents of the skillet begin to stick and burn, add a splash of water.)
Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in cheese. Continue stirring until cheese has melted, 2-3 minutes. Taste and season with more salt and pepper if necessary. Spoon mixture into bao—about ⅓ cup or 60g per bun—and serve immediately.
Make ahead: The filling can be prepared up to 3 days before serving. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator and reheat with a splash of water in a skillet or the microwave. The biscuit “bao” can be prepared 3-4 hours before serving, though they are best right out of the steamer. Store them under plastic wrap or in a Ziploc bag and reheat in the steamer or the microwave.