“Sarmale” is the most traditional one in Romania, prepared mandatory for Christmas and Easter and any other special holiday. It contains a lot of thyme, of course, my favorite and can be served with fresh polenta and sour cream. It is incredibly flavorful and can last for a week with no problems. Moreover, it is quite cheap to prepare.
Traditionally, every Romanian family is pickling their own cabbage, the entire cabbage, in dill flowers and salt. However, you can “pickle” your cabbage on the spot, if you don’t have access to a sour one.
Here’s how I prepare it!
Sarmale Servings: 25 pieces
Preparation time: 1.5 hours
Cooking time: 1.5 – 2 hours
Difficulty: medium
Ingredients
- 0.5 kg minced meat, pork and beef
- 1 onion
- 50 g rice
- 100 g canned tomatoes
- 1 tpsp paprika
- 1 tsp curcuma
- 1 tbsp thyme
- oil for frying
- salt and pepper
For assembling the meat
- 1 cabbage
- 1 lemon
- 4 leaves of laurel
- 150 tomato juice
- 1 tbsp whole black pepper
- salt for boiling the water
Directions
- In a pan sauté the onion until it gets golden.
- Add the paprika, curcuma (you can skip this one, it is not a traditional spice for this recipe, I just like it this way) and the thyme.
- You can now add the rice and the tomatoes and let the rice to cook half way. If the rice soaks all the liquid, add a bit more water.
- Pour the sauté mix over the raw minced meat and mix very well. Make sure the mixture is not too dry and difficult to maneuver. If that is the case, you can add a bit more water. It should have the consistency like in the picture:
- Season with salt and pepper.
- In a big pot that can fit in a whole cabbage, boil water with salt and a lot of lemon juice.
- Carefully place the cabbage in and let it boil until you can separate the whole leaves without breaking them.
- Now it’s the assembly part – the rolls: take one cabbage leaf, cut the hard midrib and put a tablespoon of meat mixture in the middle of the leaf. Now roll one half of the leaf in and continue rolling on the direction of the former midrib until the meat is covered. Now all you have to do it’s to tuck in the two ends of the roll, so that the meat won’t come out while cooking.
- Assembly in the pot: on the bottom of the pot layer 1-2 cm tall of small cut cabbage and 2 laurel leaves together with half of the whole pepper. Arrange in a star shape on layer of rolls.Add above them another layer of small cut cabbage and half of your tomato juice. One more layer of rolls, above it the small cut cabbage, the rest of laurel and whole pepper and the rest of the tomato juice. Boil some water and pour it over the pot until you can see it raising on the top.
- Bring the pot to a boil slowly.
- Cover the pot with a lid and simmer it on low fire for 1-2 hour.
- You will need to check on it every 15-20 min to add or remove more liquid.
- Serve the “sarmale” warm with sour cream and bread or polenta.
