Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Dill Sauce

Ingredients:

• 
  For rolls:
  2lb of ground pork
• Big cabbage (5-6lbs) with big leaves (you will not use all of it, but the bigger leaves are the easier it is to roll the rolls)
• 2 big onions
• ½ cup of rice
• Ground black pepper
• Salt to taste
• 
  For sauce: 2 big onions
• Fresh dill
• 2 tomatoes
• Sunflower or olive oil
• Salt

How to make, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: if you can’t get ground pork, get a pork and grind it in meat grinder or food processor; you may also replace pork with beef or a 50/50 mix of beef and pork (however original cabbage rolls are supposed to be made of pork):

   

2. Peel and dice onions, fry them over moderate heat till they are soft, cool them down till room temperature:

   

3. Salt meat, add ground black pepper and pour fried onions:

   

4. Boil rice till it is half ready (still hard) in a pot of salted water, drain the water, let rice to cool down till room temperature and add it to the meat:

   

5. Mix meat with rice and fried onions (make sure neither rice nor onions are not hot if you do that with your hands!):

   

6. Take a pot big enough to fit the cabbage in a whole, add water (the easiest way to measure needed amount of water is to put cabbage to the pot add water in so the 2/3 of the cabbage is under the water and then take the cabbage out, it is actually the easiest way to find out whatever the cooking pot you chose is big enough – remember you should be able to get cabbage out of the water easily). Put the pot with water on the burner and wait till it becomes boiling. Put whole cabbage to the boiling water with the stem to the bottom and boil it for about 15 minutes. Then carefully turn cabbage so the stem part is on top, stick fork into stem and take the whole cabbage out (leave the water on the burner slowly boiling, you will need it later on):

   

7. Carefully cut the top cabbage leaf off the stem (remember, cabbage is still hot!), if leaf doesn’t go easily or if leaf isn’t soft enough to be folded, put it back to the boiling water till it gets soft enough:

   

8. Cut the hard center part of the leaf off:

   

9. Ladle a tablespoon of the meat mix and put in to the stem side of the leaf:

   

10. Fold cabbage leaf forward:

    

11. Roll cabbage leaf till it touches the other side:

    

12. Fold right side of the leaf:

    

13. Fold the left side of the leaf:

    

14. Roll forward:

    

15. Roll once more:

    

16. Till you get a cabbage roll like this:

    

17. Now you just need to repeat the same procedure for the rest of the meat, if on any step cabbage gets too hard to fold, just put it back to the boiling water till it gets soft again. Put all cabbage rolls to the cast-iron pot (you may also use a baking pot with lid if you don’t have a cast-iron one):

    

18. Now it is time to prepare a tomato-dill sauce. Boil water in the cooking pot. Cut each tomato’s skin x-like, put them to the boiling water and boil for about 15-20 seconds. After that get cooking pot with tomatoes from the burner, put under cold water to cool tomatoes down and remove skin:

    

19. Peel other 2 onions, slice them into half-circles and fry them over with oil till the are soft:

    

20. Cut each tomato into 2 parts and remove stem parts. Put tomatoes to the blender and chop them till they get a paste like (if you don’t have blender you can mince it with knife but it gets a bit messy):

    

21. Add tomato paste and chopped fresh dill to the frying pan with onions, season with salt and stew for about 5-7 mins (don’t forget to stir):

    

22. Warm the oven up till 350F. Pour tomato-dill sauce over the cabbage rolls. There should be about 1 inch of the liquid in the pot, add some water if sauce wasn’t enough:

    

23. Cover pot with a lid and put it to the oven. Amount of time required for the preparation depends of how fast cabbage is prepared and how soft you would like it to be. I usually keep them for about 2 hours. After cabbage rolls are ready, serve them warm without a side dish:

    

    Sour cream and pressed garlic are good supplements for cabbage rolls.