How long to cook cabbage for whole large cabbage rolls. How long to cook cabbage rolls? How many minutes should you cook cabbage for cabbage rolls? How to soften with individual leaves

Cooking cabbage rolls usually requires a lot of time and patience. After all, you first need to boil the cabbage, then prepare the filling, which usually consists of minced meat, onions, rice and spices. And only then do they wrap the products in cabbage leaves and begin cooking them. In the article we will give recommendations on how to cook cabbage rolls. By sticking to them, you can prepare a truly delicious dish.

How to cook cabbage rolls: tips

Experienced housewives use several secrets when preparing this wonderful dish. Of course, before you start cooking, you need to find out how long you will need to cook the cabbage rolls. The duration will depend on several factors:

The composition of the gravy in which the dish is stewed. In sour cream or plain water, the cabbage rolls will reach readiness faster. If you use a thick one, it will take more time.

Method of preparation. In addition to boiling, cabbage rolls can also be cooked in the oven or steamed. If you pre-fry the envelopes, the cooking time will be significantly reduced. The cabbage rolls will take the longest to steam.

Quality and composition of the filling. In addition to meat, chopped vegetables or mushrooms are often used as a filler. And some gourmets even make cabbage rolls with minced fish. The most time, of course, will be required when stewing meat products. It is advisable to pre-fry them in oil in a frying pan before cooking.

How to cook cabbage rolls with minced meat in tomato sauce

Rice is usually used as a filler. Before mixing with minced meat, it is better to first boil it until half cooked and cool, rinsing with cold running water. The wrapped envelopes are placed in layers in a deep saucepan and filled with a mixture of tomato juice and water. The most aromatic dish is obtained when using different seasonings. Cooking time is from forty minutes to an hour.

How to cook cabbage rollswith mushrooms in sour cream

Such products are best stewed in the oven. Grease a deep pan with butter and place the cabbage rolls in one layer. The gravy is prepared from sour cream and water, taken in equal parts with the addition of salt and spices. Fill the mold with it so that the products are completely covered with liquid. Place in an oven preheated to 200 degrees and bake for forty minutes. Just before it's ready, sprinkle the dish with grated cheese.

How to cook cabbage rolls in a saucepan

To ensure that the products are completely steamed, they are made very small. When using a special device in the form of an electric steamer, you do not have to worry about maintaining the exact cooking time. You just need to select the desired mode. But, unfortunately, not all housewives have this miracle device in their kitchen. Therefore, you can use an ordinary enamel colander placed on top of a pan of water. After boiling, you will need about an hour. Monitor the presence of liquid. For best cooking, the heat should be medium, and it is better to keep the lid closed. Steamed cabbage rolls are usually served with

Stuffed cabbage rolls are a very tasty and interesting dish that will definitely appeal to all family members. The process of preparing cabbage rolls could be called simple if it were not for preparing the cabbage. Beginning housewives sometimes cope with this task only after several attempts, so everyone is interested in how to prepare cabbage for cabbage rolls?

Cabbage cooking options

In order to prepare tasty and tender cabbage rolls, you must first of all deal with cabbage. To remove leaves, you have several options:

  • - boil in water;
  • - freeze;
  • - bake in the microwave.

These cooking methods are very popular, but each of them has its own characteristics and disadvantages. Most often, people face the problem of uneven cooking of cabbage leaves.

You can cook cabbage with or without a head of cabbage, but then you need to insert a fork into the center to make it easier to remove the vegetable from the water. The microwave option is only suitable for small or medium-sized cabbage, since one that is too large may simply not fit.

Boiled cabbage

To prepare leaves for cabbage rolls, you can use one of the oldest and most proven methods, which people used many years ago. To do this you need to first prepare:

  • - a large saucepan;
  • - 4 liters of water;
  • - a tablespoon of salt;
  • - cabbage.

How to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls? This question interests many, but the process of separating cabbage leaves is quite simple and for this you should follow these steps:

  1. Peel the cabbage, remove damaged leaves and make several small cuts near the head of cabbage so that the bases of the leaves can be easily separated from the head of cabbage. After this, you need to insert a knife or fork into the center of the head of cabbage so that the process of removing the vegetable from the water causes as few difficulties as possible.
  2. Place a pan of water on the fire and bring to a boil, add salt and only then place the cabbage in it.
  3. The cabbage needs to be boiled for several minutes. How long to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls? It will take about 5-10 minutes to cook the top leaves, but inside, they may not be quite as desired, so after the first layers have been removed, the vegetable should be placed back for another couple of minutes.
  4. Leaves from cabbage must be removed until they are the desired size, since leaves that are too small are not suitable for preparing cabbage rolls.
  5. After all the leaves have been removed, they need to be cooled to make it easier to wrap the filling in them.

This option for preparing cabbage leaves takes a decent amount of time, but they continue to use it today. If you have modern technology in your home, such as a microwave, cabbage roll leaves can be prepared a little faster and easier.

Cabbage in the microwave

Today, preparing cabbage rolls scares off many women because of its complexity. But it turns out that the leaves for this tasty and interesting dish can be prepared very quickly and with a minimum of nerves, effort and time.

Before you put cabbage in the microwave, you should first of all choose the appropriate option. Cabbage should not be too small and not very large - it is best to choose a medium-sized vegetable and not round, but slightly flattened. Cabbage, which looks a bit like a tablet, has fairly large leaves that are ideal for making cabbage rolls. Microwave cabbage for cabbage rolls is prepared in several stages:

  1. The cabbage should be cleaned, the top layers unsuitable for preparing cabbage rolls and damaged areas should be removed so that there are no black spots on the leaves.
  2. Cabbage weighing up to two kilograms is placed on a plate and placed in the microwave for 10-13 minutes at a power of 900W.
  3. As soon as the microwave turns off, you need to carefully remove the plate with cabbage and cool it with running, cold water.
  4. Place the cabbage stalk side down and carefully separate the leaves, unrolling them like a rose.
  5. When all the leaves are separated from the stalk, you need to turn the cabbage over and separate the leaves with a knife, carefully trimming them.
  6. When all the leaves have been removed, you need to carefully cut off the thick veins-stems from them so that the cabbage rolls turn out tender and tasty, and it is easier to roll them.

The advantage of this method of preparing leaves for cabbage rolls is that it takes a fairly short amount of time. The leaves are separated very easily and simply, and at the same time, there are practically no damaged or defective leaves.

Freezing

This method of preparing cabbage for cabbage rolls seems a little unusual at first glance, but as it turns out, it is quite effective, although it has its drawbacks. To prepare cabbage this way you need:

  1. Prepare the cabbage: remove the top layers that are unsuitable for preparing cabbage rolls, remove areas with dark spots and damaged leaves.
  2. Place the cabbage in a tight plastic bag and place it in the freezer overnight.
  3. In the morning, you need to take out the cabbage and put it to defrost at room temperature.
  4. When the cabbage is defrosted, it will be very soft, so there will be no problems with separating the leaves from the stalk.

This option for preparing leaves for cabbage rolls takes a lot of time and if it is not available, then it is a little problematic. If the preparation of cabbage rolls is planned for the next day, it can be successfully used, but you should take into account the fact that you will need to use all the leaves at once.

Each method of preparing cabbage leaves has its own advantages and disadvantages, so every housewife needs to try all these options and choose the one that she likes best. Using these options for preparing cabbage for cabbage rolls, the whole family will be able to enjoy their delicate taste and exquisite aroma more often.

When preparing cabbage rolls, perhaps the most time-consuming task is preparing the cabbage leaves. Ever since I was a very young child, I remember my mother saying that you need “soft” cabbage for cabbage rolls; it’s easier to disassemble into individual leaves. Now all the cabbage on sale is hard as granite, and the old methods are not suitable.

For some reason, I remember how my mother cut out the stalk from the head of cabbage, poured boiling water from the kettle inside the cabbage, and the cabbage for cabbage rolls was disassembled into individual leaves. So, sorting the cabbage into cabbage rolls was a problem, to a certain extent.

There are many similar dishes, the essence of which is minced meat wrapped in leaves. Widespread in the East, in the Balkans, in the Caucasus - a dish in which minced meat, a mass with rice (and other various combinations), is wrapped in a grape leaf. The name varies, the nuances of the recipe are different. This dish is called dolma, dulma, tolma, sarma, sarma. In national cuisines, so that the dish can be prepared at any time of the year, various methods of preserving grape leaves are provided - pickling, freezing, pickling.

In our country, because grapes grow poorly, cabbage rolls are more popular. An ancient dish, mentioned 2500 years ago in Aristophanes’ comedy “The Archanians,” where the hero asks “Bring me pork in cabbage leaves.”

Determine on which side of the stalk the cabbage leaf grows, the topmost one. Use a knife to cut this leaf from the stalk

  • Place the cabbage in the kitchen sink and turn on the cold water tap. The water flow should be medium so that the water does not scatter throughout the kitchen.
  • Place the head of cabbage for cabbage rolls under a stream of water so that the water falls into the cut area and with your finger, slightly protrude the petiole of the cabbage leaf so that the stream of water falls under the leaf.

    Place the head of cabbage under a stream of water so that the water falls into the cut area

  • Water, getting under the top cabbage leaf, acts as a lubricant. By lightly shaking the petiole with your fingers, lightly pressing from the stalk along the head of cabbage, you can easily separate the leaf from the head of cabbage. There is no need to force the process. The sheet can be removed very easily; it is only important that a stream of water gets under the sheet.

    By lightly shaking the petiole with your fingers, you can easily separate the leaf from the head of cabbage

  • Just 2-3 seconds and the cabbage leaf peels off. Absolutely no damage or cracking. This will make the perfect cabbage for cabbage rolls. The process is repeated until a sufficient number of leaves are collected.

    Just 2-3 seconds and the cabbage leaf peels off. Absolutely no damage

  • But cabbage leaves are very fragile, and wrapping minced meat in them is very problematic. Usually cabbage leaves are boiled. Boil water, pour it from a kettle, or cook it in a saucepan. This process makes me sad.
  • So. Take a regular plastic bag. Cabbage for cabbage rolls is folded into a bag - fresh cabbage leaves removed. Tie the bag, but not tightly. There should be a very small hole left. Place the bag with cabbage leaves in the microwave and heat everything at full power for 1-3 minutes. Cabbage leaves become soft very quickly. You should start with 1 minute, and then control the degree of softness and add 30-60 seconds.

    Place the removed fresh cabbage leaves in a bag. Place the bag in the microwave for 1-3 minutes

  • Cabbage for cabbage rolls is cooled under running cold water. Using a sharp knife, cut off the protruding part of the cabbage leaf petiole.

    Cool cabbage leaves under cold running water.

  • Next, spread the stuffing for the cabbage rolls into the prepared cabbage leaves and wrap the cabbage rolls.

  • Stuffed cabbage rolls are a delicious Russian dish that consists of minced meat wrapped in cabbage leaves. When prepared, this food is quite soft and tender, but requires thorough preliminary preparation of the ingredients. The most labor-intensive step is preparing the sheets. The cook’s task is to make them elastic and flexible in order to avoid cracks in the fragile cabbage leaves and, as a result, spillage of the filling. We will consider the most common methods for preparing leaves for cabbage rolls in this article.

    The process of preparing cabbage for making cabbage rolls begins with purchasing a good quality head of cabbage. Where you will make your purchases, in a supermarket or at the market, or maybe you will cut cabbage in your own garden bed - it doesn’t really matter. It is much more important what shape the vegetable has. A slightly flattened, medium-sized fruit weighing up to 2 kilograms is best suited. Remove the top leaves that are unsuitable for eating immediately. The fastest way to prepare cabbage leaves is using a microwave oven. Cut the stalk from the head of cabbage and make notches in the leaves around the resulting hole. This will make it easier to remove the leaves. Place the cabbage in the microwave and bake at the highest power for 10 minutes. Then place the cabbage under running cold water and tear off the soft leaves one by one. After removing several layers, you will notice that it becomes more and more difficult to “undress” the head of cabbage. Then repeat the heating procedure in the microwave. The disadvantage of this method is that when the entire head of cabbage is disassembled, the sheets are still a little hard. But this problem can be easily fixed: stack the cabbage leaves one on top of the other and place in the microwave oven for 5 minutes. This way you will bring the cabbage roll wrapper to a completely soft and elastic state. A more traditional way to process cabbage is to boil it in water. Take a large saucepan, fill it with water, add salt and put on fire. While the broth is boiling, take a whole head of cabbage and make cuts around the perimeter of the stalk. Place the head of cabbage in boiling water for a few minutes; the vegetable should be completely immersed in water. As the head of cabbage sits in the hot broth, the leaves will gradually begin to separate from it. Using a fork, remove the “opened petals” from the water and place in another bowl. When the whole head of cabbage is disassembled, throw away the stalk. Return the leaves to the broth and boil for a couple of minutes, then remove completely and cool. It is better not to pour out the broth, as it will make a delicious sauce for cabbage rolls. The next method takes the longest amount of time to prepare cabbage, but it requires minimal effort to process it. Take a head of cabbage (the top spoiled leaves have already been removed) and put it in the freezer for 12 hours. If you did this overnight, take the cabbage out in the morning and defrost at room temperature. The melted cabbage becomes soft and the leaves can be removed in a matter of minutes. The only drawback of this method of processing cabbage for cabbage rolls is that you need to use up the entire head of cabbage at once. After freezing/thawing, the leaves are not suitable for any use other than cabbage rolls, and they are also no longer suitable for storage.

    In all the cases described above, you will need to cut off the thick veins with a knife, being careful not to touch the leaf itself with the tip and not tear it. If you doubt your dexterity and are afraid of not being able to control the knife, then take a hammer and tap the veins with light movements. This is necessary so that the sheet becomes thinner and more elastic, thereby better enveloping the filling.

    How long to cook cabbage rolls? How many minutes should you cook cabbage for cabbage rolls?

      Before I wrap the cabbage rolls in cabbage, I pour boiling water over the cabbage leaves themselves. And I cut out especially tough veins (not right through, but just cut off thick places). After this, the finished cabbage rolls are cooked for half an hour. Moreover, even if I take them out of the freezer, they last 30 minutes if you throw them into boiling water.

      We put cabbage leaves in boiling water for 3-5 minutes to soften them a little and remove the herbal taste, put rice soaked in water into the cabbage rolls and cook the cabbage rolls with gravy for 30-40 minutes, you can also fry the cabbage rolls first and then simmer.

      I don't cook cabbage leaves for cabbage rolls. I disassemble the head of cabbage, cut off the thick veins, put it in a cup or pan and simply pour boiling water over it and leave for about twenty minutes, then drain the water and the leaves are ready to be filled with minced meat. I put the cabbage rolls wrapped in leaves in a pan, pack them tightly, pour in a little water, add the fried onions and carrots and simmer over low heat for about forty minutes, you can add tomatoes or tomato paste at the end of cooking. Serve cabbage rolls with sour cream, sprinkled with herbs. You can fry the cabbage rolls a little before stewing, then the cooking time can be reduced to about thirty minutes.

      Before cooking, I scald cabbage leaves with boiling water, remove them, and make cabbage rolls. I don’t even time how long it takes to cook, I try it with a fork and taste it, so to speak. Moreover, some people like it crispier, while others cook it so that the cabbage is too soft.

      This is how I cook cabbage rolls. I put the head of cabbage in water and boil it over low heat for about 15 minutes; I made cuts in the head of cabbage around the stalk in advance. Gradually I separate the leaves from the head of cabbage (during cooking) and cut off the tough veins. I cook the cabbage rolls themselves for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of the pan. It turns out that everything takes about 2 hours.

      I cook cabbage for cabbage rolls until transparent. Place the leaves in boiling water and cook until the leaves become soft and transparent. How long to cook depends on the type of cabbage. Usually about 15 minutes. But lately I've been using Chinese cabbage. It turns out much tastier. It is faster to cook and easier to work with. I stew the cabbage rolls for about an hour. Until the rice is ready. You can add more on low heat with a lid on. It turns out tastier this way. My family's favorite dish. I always cook two three-liter saucepans. They are eaten in about two days.

      Lately, you rarely find loose heads of cabbage that can be easily disassembled into leaves. The heads of cabbage are dense and it is difficult to separate the head of cabbage into leaves. Therefore, it is better to lower the head of cabbage into a pan of boiling water for 5-10 minutes. Then, using a knife, the head of cabbage can be easily disassembled into leaves.

      If the leaves are easily removed, then you can simply pour boiling water over them for 10 minutes.

      You need to put minced meat in each leaf, wrap it in an envelope and put it in a pan, pour water, add chopped fried or sautéed onions and carrots, chopped fresh tomatoes, add salt and simmer for 30-40 minutes.

      Cabbage for cabbage rolls needs to be cooked for 5-10 minutes. Stuffed cabbage rolls need to be cooked for 30-40 minutes.

      I cook the cabbage leaves even before I start preparing the cabbage rolls themselves. this can be done in different ways, but I do it this way: I cut out the stalk, put the head of cabbage in water and boil for about twenty minutes, then it is very convenient to disassemble the head of cabbage into sheets, they are soft. And the cabbage rolls themselves take 30-40 minutes, or longer, depending on their size and how many there are in general.

      Cabbage leaves do not need to be boiled before making cabbage rolls. They must be scalded with boiling water. Personally, I do this: I put a pot of water on the stove and wait for the water to boil; while the water boils, I cut the cabbage into leaves (this needs to be done quickly and carefully so as not to tear the leaves). Then, when the water boils, I dip the cabbage leaves in boiling water one by one and immediately take them out and make cabbage rolls, put them in another pan one at a time, wrap all the leaves and pour the same hot water over the whole thing. I put the pan of cabbage rolls on the fire and cook for about 30-40 minutes. You can cook a little less or a little more - the main thing is that the rice in the minced meat is well cooked and does not crunch on your teeth (the amount of time required to cook the rice until it is ready depends on what kind of rice you added to the minced meat: some rice is pre-cooked until almost completely cooked , but I, for example, just pour boiling water over it for a few minutes and rinse it in five waters (5 times)). And in general, to know for sure whether the rice is cooked or not, you can simply try it!!!

      I usually cook cabbage for cabbage rolls for 15-20 minutes. It all depends on the size of the cabbage head.

      As for stewing cabbage rolls, it usually takes me 45-50 minutes. It happens that if the pan is large, then I can simmer them for an hour and a half.

      You don’t need to pre-cook the cabbage leaves; just pour boiling water over them. It is also advisable to choose cabbage leaves that are not too thick. Next you need to make the cabbage rolls and cook them for about 30-40 minutes over medium heat; you can check the readiness of the cabbage rolls with a fork.

      You don’t need to boil the cabbage leaves for a long time, otherwise they will completely fall apart, but boiling them too little is also bad, since the cabbage will remain tough. I boil the leaves for about 15 minutes if the cabbage is firm, winter cabbage. And if it’s summer, then 10 minutes.

      And I stew the cabbage rolls themselves for 45 minutes.

      Initially, cabbage is cooked for cabbage rolls, and then such leaves will wrap well and will not crack or break. Take a soft cabbage fork with good leaves and cut out the stalk from it.

      We cook this fork from the moment of boiling for at least thirty minutes. Then we pour out the water and the fork cools down. After that, we disassemble this fork into leaves.

      And use a wooden hammer to beat off the tops of the sheets.

      Then we fill the leaves with the filling and form cabbage rolls. The stewing time depends on the number of cabbage rolls in the pan, usually it takes at least an hour. Fill them with gravy and let them simmer with the lid closed. The rice in the cabbage rolls should be half-cooked.

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