Golubtsy (gah-loob-tsEE) are stuffed cabbage leaves. Large, flat and tender cabbage leaves make a perfect natural wrap. In Russian, they are usually stuffed with ground meat/poultry/fish and grains like rice or millet and then braised in a sauce.
I’ll give you my favorite recipe of meat and rice golubtsy, cooked in tomato and cream sauce with onions and carrots. This is one of my favorite winter time comfort foods. A bit time and effort consuming – no lying here! – but so tremendously delicious!
For the filling, you can use either raw or partially cooked grains. The choice will depend on how tender you like cooked cabbage. If you like it on a crunchy side, use partially cooked rice. I prefer cabbage very tender with this smooth, melt-in-your-mouth consistency, so I use raw rice. The reason is that rice and cabbage should get cooked at the same time.
You will need:
- 1 medium cabbage (about 22-25 leaves)
Filling:
- A small onion or half of a medium
- 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
- ½ lb ground pork
- 3/4 lb lean ground beef
- 1 and 1/4 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- About 1/3 cup white rice (short or long grain, it doesn’t matter)
Sauce:
- 1 large onions, finely chopped
- 1 large carrot, sliced thinly first lengthwise and then widthwise
- 2/3 - 1 small can of tomato paste (about 2-3 Tbsp)
- About ¼ cup whipping cream
- 1 large bay leaf
- About 2-3 cups of chicken or beef broth or water
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
- Chopped dill and/or parsley (optional)
Grate onion on a fine grater or pulse in a food processer together with garlic until pureed. Combine all the ingredients but rice for the filling and stir to combine. Add a generous splash or two of water and knead well for about 5 minutes until the mixture is very smooth and silky. Stir in rice.
Cabbage leaves should be softened before stuffing or otherwise they may (and most likely will) break. As always, blanching in hot water is the best method. It’s quite difficult to remove leaves from the cabbage without tearing them, so it is wiser to blanch a whole head of cabbage.
This is how I do it: Choose a pot large enough to easily accommodate a cabbage head. Fill it with water about 2/3 full and bring to a simmer. With a sharp knife, make a deep incision around the cabbage stalk and remove it. Thrust a Chef’s fork (a utensil with two long tines) deep into the cavity – this will serve as a handle when you transfer the cabbage to and from the blanching pot. Once the water starts simmering, place the cabbage into the pot.
When the outer leaves have softened (this would take about a minute or so), take the cabbage out and remove them, helping yourself with tongs. Put the cabbage back into the water and let another layer of leaves soften and so on and so forth in the same manner. The most inner leaves are usually too small to be stuffed, so you can use them for something else.
When dealing with savoy cabbage, as a rule you can take leaves off the cabbage head without breaking them without blanching it whole. Then blanch leaves in batches of 3-4 for several seconds.
Carefully slice off the tough thick part of the leaves without cutting them through. Put several tablespoons of the stuffing on a thicker side of each leaf and “tuck-tuck-fold” it tightly into a parcel.
Preheat vegetable oil in a skillet and quickly brown the rolls on both sides, seam side down first. Transfer the browned golubtsy into a braising pot.
Note: Browning of golubtsy is optional and not traditional. Many people skip this step. But to my taste, quick browning of golubtsy before braising give them more flavor and bring out natural sweetness of cabbage.
In the same skillet make the braising sauce. For this, sauté carrots and onions in a small amount of canola oil. When they become slightly golden brown, stir in tomato paste and cook it, stirring often, for another couple of minutes. Now stir in cream. Gradually add stock, while keeping stirring, to avoid lumps.
Add chicken stock and a bay leaf and season the sauce with salt and black pepper to taste. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour over the golubtsy. The cabbage rolls should be completely or almost completely submerged in the sauce.
Bring the pot to a simmer, reduce the heat to very low and cook until very tender, which may take up to 2-3 hours. It take that long because tomato sauce is quite acidic and it takes longer to cook rice and cabbage in acidic environment. I usually cook golubtsy in the oven. I start with 350F for about 10-15 minutes; then reduce the heat to 200-225F. At the end you can stir into the sauce a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley and/or dill.
Note: Usually, the sauce in which golubtsy have been braised turn out somewhat runny. And this is how it should be. But if you like it on a thicker side and with more velvety mouthfeel, add a bit of flour while making the sauce. Stir in about a tablespoon of flour into the contents of the skillet about a minute after adding tomato paste. Sauté half a minute or so before gradually (!) adding liquids.
You can cook the golubtsy in a tomato sauce without cream and then serve them topped with a dollop of sour cream.
Instead of green cabbage, you can use Savoy cabbage. It's much softer than regular cabbage which make it easier to remove leaves and requires less time to cook.
For the filling, instead of rice you can try other grains such as quinoa or bulgur. Instead of ground meat you can take chicken or/and turkey.
There are also several derivatives of this dish, among which “lazy golubtsy” and “hedgehogs” are the most popular. For lazy golubtsy, the cabbage is shredded finely and added right to the meat-and-rice mixture, which is then formed into balls and braised in tomato sauce.
For hedgehogs, the cabbage is shredded thinly and put between the layers of the meat-and-rice balls (“hedgehogs” should be arranged in a pot loosely so they don’t stick together). The sauce is the same.
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