Cabbage rolls or Sarma
Cabbage rolls are a meal admired by many around the world, just prepared in a many different ways, what depends on the recipe’s place of origin.
Recipe’s place of origin I say? Whos great, great, great… grandmother made first cabbage rolls?
History
Once upon a time, Ottoman empire (modern day Turkey) had advanced deep in to central Europe and was stretching from Middle East, at times, all the way in to Hungary, even Austria. Today there are many countries, from Turkey throughout south and central Europe, all the way to east and parts of western Europe, that may find recipe in grandma’s cookbooks written many generations ago. By that said there are many versions and ways of preparing cabbage rolls that we’ll call sarma, since this version is coming from one cookbook in continental part of central-European country of Croatia.
In Turkish language “sarma” is called Lahana sarması.
Recipe
Serves 8 to 16 people
- Preparation time: ~1h
- Cooking time: 3:30h – 4:00h (on a low heat)
- Serving: For best taste serve day or two after cooking. In that case, once it cools down keep it refrigerated. When ready to serve heat it well through, 30 minutes to 1h, depends on quantity.
- Serve with mashed potatoes and red wine.
Sarma will make a great wintertime meal.
Ingredients
- 1 medium to large size sour cabbage head
- 1/2kg – 1kg (1-2 lb.) sliced sauerkraut
- 1.5kg (3 lb.) ground beef
- 1/2kg (1 lb.) ground pork
- smoked meat, could be few smoked ribs, smoked bacon…
- 5 large spoons of white rice
- 1 onion – chopped
- 1 large spoon of olive oil
- 1 egg
- salt
- paper
- 1 teaspoon of Vegeta spice (Vegeta is a mixture of spices and various vegetables)
Hope you’ll enjoy preparing this meal as much you and your guests will enjoy eating it.
Preparation
- In a medium size saucepan add 3-4L of water, half of smoked meat and 1/2 of sliced sauerkraut. Cover it and cook this soup over medium heat while you are preparing the rest.
- Whatever smoked meat you have left cut it in to small pieces. In a bowl add the meat, smoked meat, rice, chopped onion, olive oil, egg and all the spices, then mix this well.
- From cabbage head peel the leaves. If cabbage is to sour you can wash the leaves a bit in the water. Take each cabbage leaf (large leaves you can cut in half – also remove hard center part of large leaves so you can easily roll them) and add meat mixture in each leaf, then roll it. Secure each role by gently pressing ends of the leaf towards the center.
- Spread if you like one or two sauerkraut leaves on the bottom of a large pan. Place prepared cabbage rolls on the top by adding on the top of each layer whatever sauerkraut you have left. Once all the cabbage rolls are in carefully pour in the soup and all of its contents. If all the cabbage rolls are not covered with the soup add some water. Cook it over low heat for 3 1/2 to 4h.
Serve sarma with homemade loaf of white bread…
More recipes – Bon Appétit!
Hey!
I remember my grandmother making this. Great, uh, great meal and even better memories. Not sure though if I am brave enough to try and make cabbage rolls myself 🙂
Re: “Pet”
Glad to hear that! You should try to make “sarma” if you can find sour cabbage leafs.