How to cook turkish stuffed cabbage

Have you ever wondered what you can do with white cabbage? This recipe seems difficult but it is as easy as making macaroni cheese.

Use your knife and take the bottom (stem) of the cabbage. You can use this part for a soup.

Chop one large white onion

Crush some garlic cloves. I used 6 cloves

Mince them finely

Chop green chiles. I have used Serrano chiles. You can use Anaheim or any other type depending on your tolerance for hotness.

Boil water in a large pan. I filled it till the half. Squeeze half lemon and throw the lemon in the water.

Add one table spoon kosher or table salt.

Mince further few springs of thyme

You can use if you wish few springs of rosemary. You can in fact add and use any other herb you want.

Chop one cup of parsley.

Add 500gr or 1 pound (roughly 2 cups) of minced beef. I have used mix of beef and lamp. I also tried the vegetarian version with soya meat and it worked.

Rinse 2 cups of white rice. Do not use basmati or other Asian rice. You can use any type of white rice.

Add a table spoon of various seasonings. I have added salt, black pepper, red pepper, cumin, oregano and nutmeg. I also added a pinch of cinnamon.

You can skip this step but to stick to the original turkish recipe, I have added a table spoon of "salça". It is a red pepper paste. You can also add a table spoon of tomato paste.

Mix all these well.

This is your filling. It is a standard filling for many Turkish and Mediterranean recipes. You can stuff vine leaves, bell peppers, eggplants too. you can keep this up to 6 months in the freezer.

Put your white cabbage on the pan. If you pan is small don't worry. It will melt down.

Let this side boil for 15-20 min

Carefully flip it to the other side.

Use your utensils and make sure you do not break the leaves.

Boil on this side for another 20 minutes.

Take a cabbage leave, cut in half and take out the hard white stem. Then fill it with your filling and start rolling.

While rolling make sure you take the sides inwards to ensure sides are closed.

I learned this by trying it few times.

Organize them in the same pan which you used to boil the cabbage.

Put a heavy item on top of your pan. Also add a table spoon of rice on top. Add 4 cups of water and let it cook for 25 minutes or more till the rice you put on top is cooked.

While ur cabbage "dolmas" are cooking, mix juice of a lemon, a table spoon of cayenne pepper, two table spoons of tomato paste and dried mint. Once your cabbages are cooked served them with this sauce