Are you looking for a festive dish to serve for St. Patrick’s Day that your kids will actually eat? We’ve updated the recipe for the delicious and beautiful Rueben Loaf that my friend, Kim, taught us how to make and formatted it for easy printing. My kids devour this and BSB and I love it, too! It’s the yummiest way I’ve ever found to eat corned beef and cabbage.
The braiding technique seems a little intimidating, but isn’t actually all that difficult. It makes all of the ingredients inside moist and tender. I want to try it with pizza fillings or other warm sandwich ingredients.
Scroll to the bottom for the printable recipe.
Using frozen dough loaves makes the process much simpler and quick to do. We actually combined two loaves of dough for this one large loaf. You could make a smaller loaf with just one, or perhaps make the dough thinner and get it out of just one loaf.
Swiss cheese is the cheese of preference here, but you could also substitute mozzarella or other white cheese. Or use them all, because really there is no such thing as too much cheese. Am I right?
We cooked our corned beef in the slow cooker. I was afraid it was over-done (our crock pot seems to be pretty fast for a slow cooker), but after baking inside the loaf with all of the other goodies, it was nice and tender.
Adding layers of thousand island, cheese, sliced corned beef, and sauerkraut. We got a little crazy and random with our layers, but just kept adding stuff until it looked like we had better stop in order to accommodate the dough.
Here BSB is demonstrating the braiding technique (my hands aren’t that hairy, FYI). There are several different YouTube videos that show a few different ways to approach the braided loaf. As long as you can tuck your ends in I think any approach works.
Serve with extra Thousand Island Dressing. (And green napkins.)
Ingredients
- 1 or 2 Frozen bread dough loaves (Rhodes or generic equivalent)
- Thousand Island Dressing
- Cooked Corned Beef thinly sliced
- Sauerkraut
- Swiss Cheese shredded
Instructions
- Thaw out the loaf/dough. Don’t let it rise, just barely get to room temperature.
- Work it out in to the shape of the pan (cookie sheet, rectangular).
- Once spread, take a knife and make small slits up each side about 1 inch apart and a couple of inches long.
- Layer the fillings: meat, sauerkraut, dressing, cheese, and repeat (order isn't very important).
- Fold one end of dough up and start “braiding” the cut pieces pieces on top. Alternate strips of dough from each side of the loaf.
- When you get about 3/4 way down the loaf, fold the other end up and finish braiding.
- For a glossy finish, beat some egg whites and brush them on top of the loaf.
- Bake at 350 for 25-30 mins. or until dough is golden brown and ingredients are heated through. (Check instructions on dough packaging for reference)
- Slice and serve with Thousand Island Dressing.
how much ingredients measured also how many does this serve? thanks
Phenomenal! One of our favorite recipes. Easy to make and very versatile. Made the original recipe and loved it. Make Turkey Reuben’s the second time. So good!
Can you use spicy mustard instead of thousand island dressing? I just can’t stand tha dressing and I love mustard, except honey mustard, lol!!
The original recipe was actually a pizza loaf that mom did, then she tried the Reuben…you can do anything! My kids enjoy pizza the most.