Cooking cabbage rolls with meat and rice: ingredients, step by step recipe with photo

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Cabbage rolls, stuffed cabbage or simply cabbage rolls - this is the name of the same dish, which will be discussed in the article, in different countries of Eastern Europe. It has several varieties. As a rule, minced meat or vegetables with the addition of rice or other cereals are wrapped in cabbage leaves, after which such semi-finished products are put in a pan or cauldron and stewed in tomato sauce. Sometimes, to simplify the time-consuming process, these same ingredients are simply finely chopped and mixed together to form large patties. Detailed recipes for the preparation of cabbage rolls with meat in the traditional and "lazy" version will be presented below. In both cases, the dish will turn out equally tasty.

Technology for cooking cabbage rolls with meat and rice

Analogues of this dish can be found in almost everycuisine of the world. In the Caucasus, minced meat is traditionally wrapped in grape leaves, which are even preserved for the winter so that cabbage rolls can be made at any time of the year. But in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the dish is prepared exclusively from white cabbage leaves. To make it easier to wrap the filling, they are pre-boiled and, if necessary, beaten with a kitchen hammer.

In general, the technology for cooking cabbage rolls with meat is as follows:

1. Preparation of cabbage leaves. They need to be removed from the head and boiled in boiling water for several minutes to make them softer. The rough part of the sheet can be carefully cut off with a knife or beaten off with a wooden mallet.
2. Cooking minced meat. It can be meat, mushroom or vegetable, but with the obligatory addition of cereals, most often rice (less often buckwheat or pearl barley). Raw or fried onion in vegetable oil is put in minced meat.
3. Formation of products. Raw minced meat is wrapped in cooled cabbage leaves. Many housewives call this step one of the most difficult to prepare cabbage rolls with meat. So that the products do not fall apart during the extinguishing process, you need to learn how to wrap them correctly.
4. Preparing the sauce. Stuffed cabbage is usually stewed in tomato or tomato-sour cream filling. The more sauce there is in the pan, the juicier the finished dish will turn out.
5. Stewing on the stove or baking in the oven. Stuffed cabbage should languish in a double-bottomed pan or cauldron over low heat until they are soft enough. Cooking time depends on several factors.

Not less thanlazy cabbage rolls are delicious, in the preparation of which chopped meat and half-cooked rice are not wrapped in leaves, but mixed with finely chopped cabbage. Then the products formed from minced meat are stewed in the same way in sauce and served with sour cream.

List of ingredients

When preparing cabbage rolls with meat and rice, the following products are used:

• cabbage - 2 pieces;
• meat (beef, pork, poultry) - 1 kg;
• rice - ¾ st.;
• carrots - 3 pieces;
• onion - 2 pcs;
• vegetable oil - 70 ml;
• tomato paste - 3 tsp;
• sour cream - 3 tbsp. l.;
• black pepper - ½ tsp;
• s alt to taste.

The amount of rice in the filling depends on what result the hostess wants to get. In this recipe, there will be a little less rice than minced meat, but you can take more, for example 1 cup. Then there will be more cabbage rolls themselves.

How to choose cabbage for cabbage rolls?

Not every head of cabbage can be easily disassembled into leaves without tearing or damaging them. First you need to learn how to choose the right cabbage.

The perfect head of cabbage is tight, dense and flattened on top, almost white. The stalk of such cabbage is usually small, but on the contrary, there are a lot of leaves, while they are even, juicy and large. A medium-sized head of 2 kg is best suited. Too large leaves will make huge, bast-like cabbage rolls. On the table, such a dish does not look very good.

Some housewives can spend hours searching the market for a suitablecooking cabbage rolls with meat. But the result is worth it. Stuffed cabbage from such cabbage will turn out just perfect.

Preparation of cabbage leaves

The most time-consuming part of the process of making cabbage rolls with meat and rice is to separate the whole head into leaves. This can be done in different ways:

1. Boil water in a large pot. Rinse the head of cabbage under running water and remove the dirty and rough upper leaves, then prick the stalk with a large fork. Dip the cabbage in boiling water for 5 minutes. During this time, the top sheets should become soft. Now the head of cabbage needs to be taken out of the pan and put on a plate. Cut off 3-4 top leaves with a knife, then return the head of cabbage to boiling water for the next 5 minutes. Leaves should be even and medium in size.
2. While water is boiling in a large saucepan, use a sharp knife to cut a stalk from a whole head of cabbage. After that, send the cabbage into boiling water for 3-4 minutes. After the specified time, remove the head of cabbage from the pan, put it on a plate, cool a little and disassemble it into leaves, if necessary helping yourself with a knife.
3. Take a head of cabbage, peel it from the top of the bad leaves and send it whole to the freezer for 12 hours. After a while, transfer the cabbage to the shelf of the refrigerator and completely defrost. The sheets come off very easily. This method of preparing cabbage is one of the easiest and most convenient.
4. It is no less easy to disassemble a head of cabbage into leaves using a microwave. To do this, the cabbage is sent to it first for 1 minute,then another for the same time and another 60 seconds. Next, you need to look at the state of the head and, if possible, separate a few top leaves. After that, place the forks in the microwave for another 1 minute, then again remove a few new leaves. Thus, in about 10 minutes, you can disassemble the entire head of cabbage.

Cut off the rough part from the prepared cabbage leaves at the base of the leaf. Some housewives in this case prefer to use not a knife, but a kitchen wooden hammer.

Stuffing for classic cabbage rolls

The taste of the finished dish largely depends not on the type of cabbage and the size of the cabbage leaf, but on the filling. Depending on the ratio of rice and meat in minced meat, cabbage rolls will turn out different every time. If desired, raw and fried vegetables, fresh herbs, suitable spices can be added to the filling. All this will improve the taste of cabbage rolls with meat.

Step-by-step cooking of minced meat for this dish is as follows:

1. While the cabbage leaves are cooling, it's time to start stuffing.
2. Pig-beef or pork-chicken mince is ideal for cabbage rolls. If you use only pork, the cabbage rolls will turn out fatty, while from beef or chicken they often come out dry. Before cooking minced meat, cut off all films, tendons and excess fat, then rinse it and pass it through a meat grinder.
3. Boil rice until half cooked. To do this, pour ¾ cup of cereal into a small saucepan, pour it with 1 cup of water and put the dishes onsmall fire. Cook until the water is absorbed into the rice. Before adding to the minced meat, cool the semi-finished porridge.
4. In addition to rice and meat, it is recommended to put browned vegetables in the filling: carrots and onions. With them, minced meat will turn out more juicy. To do this, grate the carrots on a medium grater and fry until tender in vegetable oil. Sauté the onion separately. Cool the vegetables and add to the minced meat and rice.
5. Stir the ingredients together. Add s alt (1 tsp or to taste) and pepper. Stuffing for cabbage rolls is ready.

Stuffing cabbage with meat stuffing

The next step in preparing this dish is the most difficult for many people. And even if it was possible to easily disassemble the head of cabbage into leaves and make good minced meat, this does not mean at all that the cabbage rolls will not unfold during cooking in a saucepan. Therefore, you need to be able not only to choose the right ingredients and prepare the ingredients of the dish, but also to shape the products so that they do not lose their appearance during the heat treatment.

At this stage, the step-by-step preparation of cabbage rolls with rice and meat can be represented as follows:

1. Cabbage leaf put on a cutting board. Cut off the hard part with a knife, which will interfere with the roll of the stuffed cabbage.
2. Put 1-2 tablespoons of minced meat closer to the base of the leaf.
3. Wrap the filling in a cabbage leaf with an envelope.
4. Shape the rest of the cabbage rolls in the same way. Place them in the pan seam side down, positioning them as best as possible.closer to each other.

There are other ways to form cabbage rolls:

1. Spread the cabbage leaf on a flat surface. Closer to its base lay out the filling. Roll up the cabbage leaf. Bend the free edges inward, first on one side and then on the other. This method of wrapping the filling in a cabbage leaf is considered the most reliable. Even with a strong boil, the cabbage rolls will not unfold.
2. Cut a large leaf of cabbage with a knife into 3-4 small triangles. Collapse each bag (as before for seeds). Place some filling inside the bag. Bend the edges inward, as described in the previous method. Cabbage triangles will make very small cabbage rolls, about two bites in size.

Which of the proposed methods to choose depends on personal preference.

Tomato dressing

After the cabbage rolls are formed, they can be additionally fried in a pan with heated vegetable oil. This will brown them and give them a more appetizing appearance. The only drawback is that the dish will turn out to be greasy, so you can safely skip this step.

Traditionally, cabbage rolls are stewed in tomato sauce. It is very easy to cook it. It is enough to dissolve tomato paste (3 tablespoons) in 2-3 glasses of warm boiled water. Pour the stuffed cabbage with the resulting solution in a saucepan so that the water level is 2 cm below the top edge.

Another cooking method is also possible. Cabbage rolls with meat and rice in tomato-sour cream dressing will turn out even softer than usual. That is why, so that the cabbage does not spread at all, theyyou can simmer for 10 minutes less. To prepare tomato-sour cream dressing, you need to combine 300 g of sour cream and tomato sauce (Krasnodarsky is ideal) and add 1-2 cloves of garlic squeezed through a press. The resulting dressing must be diluted with water and pour it over the stuffed cabbage in a saucepan so that they are completely covered.

The order and time of cooking cabbage rolls

The dish can be stewed in a saucepan on the stove and baked in the oven. In the latter case, the sauce will turn out to be thicker, and the cabbage rolls themselves will definitely not fall apart, as when boiling on the stove. But far from always they turn out to be as juicy as when stewing under the lid in a saucepan.

In general, cabbage rolls after boiling in a saucepan should simmer over low heat for about 50 minutes, that is, until the cabbage becomes soft. It is important to make sure that the dressing does not boil too much, otherwise the cabbage leaves will unfurl.

But it will take about 45 minutes to cook cabbage rolls with meat in the oven at a temperature of 180 ° C, and there should be a lot of sauce, about 1 cm higher than the products themselves, since it boils away a lot.

The finished dish is served with sour cream sauce.

Features and secrets of cooking

To make the dish tasty, it is recommended to take into account the following points when preparing it:

1. Only semi-cooked rice should be added to minced meat for stuffing. If you cook it completely, then during the preparation of cabbage rolls with meat, itturns into porridge. If the rice is, on the contrary, raw, then it will absorb all the meat juice. As a result, cabbage rolls will turn out dry inside.
2. The filling will turn out even tastier if the minced meat is first beaten off, as when cooking cutlets.
3. If there is too much dressing, cabbage rolls will rise to the top when boiling (like dumplings) and then the likelihood that they will turn around when stewing will be very high. To prevent this from happening, immediately after adding the sauce, cover the contents of the pan with a flat plate.

Cooking lazy cabbage rolls with meat and rice

There is not always time to disassemble the cabbage into leaves, and then properly wrap them so that the products do not fall apart during cooking. To facilitate the whole laborious process, another method of cooking cabbage rolls with meat was invented, which can be called "lazy". In this case, cabbage is simply finely chopped, and then mixed with minced meat, from which products similar to cutlets are subsequently formed.

The process of cooking "lazy" cabbage rolls with meat consists of the following steps:

1. Cabbage (400 g) finely chopped, put in a deep bowl and pour boiling water over. Leave like this for 5-10 minutes.
2. Chop an onion (150 g) in any convenient way.
3. Round rice (100 g) boil until half cooked.
4. Chop 500g of beef, pork or poultry.
5. Drain the water from the cabbage, throwing it in a colander, then squeeze it out with your hands.
6. Connectcabbage with chopped onion, cooled rice and minced meat. S alt and pepper to taste.
7. Shape large cutlets with your hands. Roll them in flour on all sides.
8. Fry the formed cutlets in vegetable oil. Put them on a baking sheet.
9. Prepare a sauce of 250 g of sour cream, tomato paste (3 tablespoons) and garlic (2-3 pieces). Dilute it with water (2 tablespoons).
10. Pour lazy cabbage rolls with sauce until the middle of the mold.
11. Bake the dish in a preheated oven (180 ° C) for 45 minutes. Sprinkle ready-made lazy cabbage rolls with herbs.