We love our cabbage rolls especially when they’re pickled, they are tangy and soft, easy to work with and so delicious! I love to serve them with mashed potatoes however, my daughters like to eat them with yogurt.
If you cannot find pickled cabbage you can still make this with regular cabbage, you will have to prepare it. I will write that out for you below.
What you will need:
- 1 x 1.5 L jar pickled cabbage
- 1 lb ground beef
- 2 cups jasmine, or calrose or basmati rice
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp red pepper paste (optional) or roasted red pepper*
- 1 medium to large onion
- some fresh dill
- some fresh parsley
- paprika
- salt and pepper
- water, tomato paste and pepper paste and olive oil for cooking
Rinse rice a few times and drain, clean the dill and parsley and chop up finely, as well as the onion.
Saute the chopped onion in olive oil, add in the tomato paste and pepper paste if using, add in the rice and sprinkle with paprika, season with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust filling, you may want to add more tomato paste or pepper paste or salt or paprika, remove from heat and add in the fresh herbs, and raw ground beef, combine well, taste test for flavour, adjust as needed.
The leaves that come in a jar are large, I cut them into quarters or in half if they are smaller. Fill with a spoon or you can use your hands, roll them tightly, and fill the pot up.
For the bottom of the pot I like to add sliced tomatoes or potatoes to help prevent the rolls from burning.
Bring about 5 to 6 cups of water to boil, add two tablespoons of tomato and pepper paste and season with salt. Pour over the rolls, water should reach the top level of the rolls. I like to add a tsp of tomato and pepper paste on top of the rolls then give a good drizzle of olive oil. Bring to a boil cover with lid. Cook on medium to low heat.
Takes an 1 hour and 15 min to cook (approx). Set aside and allow to rest for half hour before serving.
Enjoy!
* I have roasted red peppers that I freeze and use for dishes like this, red pepper just adds a wonderful flavour. If you don’t have any that is okay, you can use tomato paste.
For those that cannot find pickled cabbage, you can prepare a cabbage for this, it won’t be tangy but it will still be delicious!
Remove core from cabbage, and discard outer layers, bring to a boil in a pot full of water, as the cabbage boils the leaves start to separate, remove them as they get soft, you will be basically un-layering the cabbage as it softens up while boiling.
Once you have all your leaves you may fill them with the filling. You can cut your cabbage leaves in half or quarters depending how large your cabbage is. We like smaller cabbage rolls so I cut them in four.
For an extra layer of flavour you can add some sujuk Turkish sausage in the mix with the raw ground beef, you simply grind it up a bit in a processor so it can be combined well with the ground beef.
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