How to cook sarmale - recipe (including photos)

Sarmale is a typical Romanian dish, which in English terms can be translated as stuffed cabbage rolls.

For the preparation of a serious quantity of sarmale,the following are needed for the composition:

- one big pickled cabbage (the one bought weighted almost 3 kilograms, including the brine it was kept in).
You can  find pickled cabbage at the East-European groceries that you might know. We usually buy it from a Turkish shop in Trier, on Neustrasse (20 meters from the junction with Kaiserstrasse)

- 1 kilogram of minced meat (it can be pork, veal, or mixed. For those on a special diet, you can use also chicken)

- 100 grams of rice (depending on your taste, you can put more or less rice)

- 2 chopped onions

- 1 big grated carrot

- 2 eggs.
- 2 spoons with sunflower oil
- laurel (leaves)

The preparation starts by mixing well all the ingredients mentioned above and seasoning according to taste with salt, pepper and paprika:

Once you're almost done with mixing, you can also add some tomato juice:

- cut the cabbage leaves carefully, to obtain stripes of cabbage as large as a palm:

- place a small portion of meat mix onto the cabbage leave and roll it to obtain an hermetic cylinder like shape:

- the small pieces of cabbage that result upon cutting the cabbage are used as a first layer on the bottom of the boiling pot:

- place the rolls in successive layers in the pot:

- once you reach the top of the pot, place another layer of chopped cabbage leaves and 5-6 tomatos:

- add on top some extra tomato juice, additional spices and water to completely fill in the pot

- finally, boil them for approximately 2-3 hours at moderate heat. The key is to boil it until the cabbage leaves become tender:

- we recommend eating sarmale with fresh cream.

Bon appetit !