#Grape leaf how to
The video below shows you how to do it in a way that seals the leaves, so that the filling won’t pop out when cooking. With your filling ready, now comes the fun part: rolling your stuffed grape leaves. Mix everything together to create your rich, hearty, and delicious filling, ready to be stuffed into the grape leaves. With the heat off, take your drained rice and simply add it to the pan. Now take the diced or minced meat, and add it to the pan.Ĭook for around 5 minutes, letting the meat brown and mix with the vegetables and the spices, as shown below. Once the 10 minutes passed since you started cooking the onion-carrot-cabbage mixture, add the tomato puree or passata to the pan, and mix it into the vegetables, as shown below.Īs soon as the tomato passata has been added, add the spices (salt, pepper, summer savory or thyme, oregano, and paprika), and cook the whole mixture for 2-3 minutes, stirring it as you go, as shown below. After 5 minutes, strain it and set it aside.īy now, the vegetables in the pan should be cooking away nicely, creating a colorful, earthy vegetable mixture that will form the base of your filling. Place the rice in a pot, pour boiling water over it, and leave it to rest for 5 minutes. Now, rinse the rice in a strainer under running water until the water seeping through is clear. While your diced and shredded vegetables are cooking, you have time to prepare both the meat and rice, ready to add to the pan in due course.įirst, take the meat, and either dice it into small cubes or mince it, depending on preference. Now, put a pan on medium heat and add olive oil.Īdd the shredded cabbage and carrots to the pan, and cook the mixture over medium heat, for around 10 minutes. With your leaves resting, it’s time to start making the filling to stuff in the leaves.įirst, prep the ingredients. Make sure the leaves are submerged in the boiling water.Īfter 1-2 minutes, using a slotted spoon, take them out and lay them to rest on a plate. You’ll need to let the leaves boil for around 1-2 minutes until they change color. Once the water is ready, add all of your leaves into the pot. If you’re using fresh leaves, keep readingįirst, bring a pot of boiling water to the boil. If using jarred leaves, just drain them, set them aside, and go to step 2. Note that you can skip this step if you’re not using fresh leaves and are using jarred ones instead. Sour cream (for serving with the stuffed grape leaves).Cabbage (15-20 leaves, to line the bottom and the top of the pot in which we’ll bake the stuffed grape leaves).Don’t go chasing summer savory if not readily available!Īdditional Ingredients for Serving with the Stuffed Grape Leaves If you don’t have summer savory, thyme is quite similar in taste, so you can substitute in thyme. Note: Summer savory (or ‘cimbru’ as it’s called in Romanian) is commonly used in Romanian cuisine, especially in stuffed grape leaves. Cimbru/Summer Savory or Thyme (1 teaspoon)*.Carrots (2 big carrots or 3 small ones).For example, the ones below (sold on Amazon), come in a jar with about 90 leaves, which would be just the right amount for this recipe. So, you can also buy pre-packaged vine leaves on Amazon or specialty stores and even in some grocery stores with an international food aisle. Of course, not everyone would have access to that. We used grape leaves freshly picked from a vineyard. Grape Leaves – about 80-100, depending on the size, for the amount of filling below.
To make my Eastern European stuffed grape leaves recipe, you’ll need the following:
#Grape leaf free
Enjoy making this recipe, and feel free to adapt it how you wish! Ingredients
It is, in fact, a recipe my mother has been making for decades, passed down from her mother and so on, with adaptations along the way.īut from different leaves to different fillings, the diversity in this recipe is vast. In Romanian cuisine, sarmale stuffing is up to 70% meat, whereas in Moldovan cuisine, the stuffing has more rice than meat.Īs mentioned, this recipe is Moldovan and Eastern European-inspired. While grape leaves are commonly used, you’ll also find dolma and sarma recipes that use cabbage leaves, along with many other types of leaves.Įven within neighboring cuisines, such as Romanian and Moldovan, the dish can be very different. Dolma, sarma, tolma, yebra, and dolmades, are just some of its many forms. You’ll find stuffed leaf dishes in so many cuisines with many different names.
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