Traditionally, stuffed cabbage rolls belong to Ukrainian cuisine, but for Russians this dish has long become truly their own. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it is not at all necessary to cook them with minced meat, since there are a large number of lean and vegetarian recipes.
To prepare the simplest vegetable cabbage rolls, you will need 1 kg of young cabbage, 150-200 g of boiled rice, 2 onions, 1 carrot, 250-300 g of fresh mushrooms, pepper, salt, bay leaf and other favorite spices.
Rinse the mushrooms thoroughly and cut them into slices, chop the onion very finely, grate the carrots. In a pre-prepared frying pan, heat the vegetable oil, in which fry the onion until lightly transparent. Then put the carrots in the bowl, simmer the vegetables for another 4-5 minutes, and then add the chopped mushrooms to them, then cook the ingredients for 5-6 minutes. At the end of this time, salt, pepper and add spices.
Then, in a separate bowl, combine vegetables and mushrooms with boiled rice. Stir the ingredients thoroughly, then start wrapping the stuffed cabbage rolls. This is done in this way. Remove the top leaves from the cabbage head, they are not needed, then remove the others, rinse them well and put a small amount of filling on the sheet, which must be wrapped in a small envelope. Then put the formed cabbage rolls in the roaster with preheated water, where simmer them over low heat for 25-30 minutes.
If desired, the water in the roaster can be replaced with a pre-cooked vegetable broth.
Determine the readiness of cabbage rolls by the degree of softness of the cabbage leaves.
Another interesting recipe for vegetarian cabbage rolls is pickled. To prepare them, you will need 3 onions, 2 carrots, a couple of celery stalks, 3-4 tbsp. vegetable oil, 1 kg of cabbage, 2-3 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and other spices.
Cut the onion into small cubes and the carrots and celery into very thin strips. After that, sauté all vegetables in preheated vegetable oil for 5-6 minutes. Then separate 2-3 small leaves from the cabbage head, which are also chopped into thin strips and mix with fried vegetables and garlic passed through a crusher. Season all ingredients with salt and fry for another 3-4 minutes.
Put the remaining cabbage in a saucepan, pour boiling water over and cook on the lowest heat for 4-5 minutes, then remove the vegetables and cool. After that, disassemble the cabbage into leaves, while cutting off the thick parts.
The combination of pre-cooking and solids processing will make rolling cabbage leaves easier. Moreover, this is true for elderly and already lying vegetables.
Put about one tablespoon of the filling in each leaf and fold them into envelopes. Then place the latter in a saucepan, along with peppercorns, a little more salt and bay leaves. After that comes the most interesting part of cooking: on stuffed cabbage, you need to set a little oppression of about a kilogram and keep the products for about a day at room temperature. Then move the pan to the refrigerator, where the cabbage rolls should be infused for another 5-6 days, after which they will be ready to eat. The taste of such pickled cabbage rolls will be somewhat specific, but interesting.
