We cook classic stuffed cabbage with minced meat and rice

Stuffed cabbage is a dish that was traditionally cooked in late summer, when the early cabbage ripened. Probably, each family has its own favorite stuffing for cabbage rolls, someone prefers to fill cabbage leaves with minced meat with the addition of cereals, while others choose vegetarian options with stuffing from mushrooms, potatoes or a mixture of vegetables. But all these dishes are prepared according to a single technology, so we will consider the classic recipe "stuffed cabbage with minced meat and rice." And so make the nuances in the preparation of each culinary master at his own discretion.

So, how correctly to prepare cabbage rolls? To begin with, as usual, prepare the products. We will need one rather large head of cabbage, weighing about 1.2 kilograms, 600 grams of finished minced meat (as a rule, they take minced meat, cooked from pork and beef, but this is a matter of taste). In addition, it will take about three hundred grams of boiled rice or 100 grams of dry, a couple of onions, carrots, tomato sauce, spices and a little sour cream.

From how well we prepare the cabbage, will depend not only taste, but also the appearance of our cabbage rolls. The easiest way to prepare cabbage rolls with minced meat and rice from young cabbage, which leaves are not too tightly adjacent to the head. This head is easy to disassemble on leaves, which should be boiled in salted and acidified vinegar boiling water until soft.

But also from winter cabbage it is possible to prepare quite good cabbage rolls. With such cabbage it is difficult to remove the leaves while it is damp, so the cabbage should be cut out and put it into boiling water. After the upper leaves become translucent, the head is removed and several layers of leaves are removed from it. If closer to the middle of the head, the leaves again cease to be easily separated, then the cabbage should be placed again in boiling water and cooked a little.

However, this method of preparing cabbage is laborious enough, therefore, today many fans of cabbage rolls use a microwave oven for these purposes. The prepared head with a carved cuttle should be placed in a bowl suitable for use in a microwave oven. You do not need to add water. We put the dishes with cabbage into the microwave oven, turn on the oven at full power for five minutes. Then we extract cabbage and place it in a container with cold water or simply cool it under the tap. After such treatment, the leaves are separated no worse than with the boiling of the head, and the preparation time for the cabbage will be much less.

Now you need to make minced meat. As already mentioned, the composition of stuffing can be varied to your taste, the only condition is that it should be moderately fat, as when using lean minced stuffing it will turn out to be dry. In the mince you need to add rice. Here, too, there are some nuances. Many lay in the ready-made boiled rice, but there are cooks who prefer to put raw croup. In the latter case, rice should be washed and doused with boiling water, and then mixed with minced meat. It should be borne in mind that when using raw cereals, our stuffed cabbage rolls with minced meat and rice will be prepared somewhat longer, because we need the rice to get ready.

In addition, minced raw onions are placed in minced meat. And to make the filling juicy and slightly reduce the caloric content of the prepared dish, you can add to mince the finely chopped cabbage, which remained after the parsley was sorted into leaves. Naturally, you need not forget to salt our stuffing for cabbage rolls and season it using any spices you like.

Now prepare the sauce. To do this, fry the chopped onion and carrots and add tomato sauce and sour cream to them. The sauce for making cabbage rolls should be thick, so it is better not to add water to it. Sauce should be salt and pepper, you can put a bay leaf.

Now let's start forming cabbage rolls. Take the boiled cabbage leaf, if it has a thick stem, then cut it with a sharp knife. Now put a spoonful of ready-made stuffing on the sheet and wrap our pigeon like an envelope. Prepared cabbage rolls can be fried in oil, and if you want to cook a dish with less fat and calories, then raw stuffed cabbage rolls should be immediately sent to a container with sauce. Stew cabbage in sauce for about forty minutes, until cabbage and rice (if used raw croup) will not reach the readiness.

By the way, cabbage rolls with minced meat and rice can not be stewed, but baked in the oven. To do this, put them on a baking sheet, pour the cooked sauce and send it to the oven. In this case, shortly before cooking, cabbage rolls can be sprinkled with grated cheese.

Similarly, you can cook cabbage rolls with buckwheat and minced meat, replacing rice in the recipe with buckwheat groats.