Lean stuffed cabbage with mushrooms

Lean stuffed cabbage with mushrooms is a wonderful dish that will help diversify your diet during Lent. In addition, delicious cabbage rolls can be both a festive dish and a good lunch at work: if you take it with you to the brakes. Any stuffed cabbage is quite difficult to cook - but the result is worth it. Soft tender cabbage, in which appetizing filling is wrapped, is exactly what you need for a hearty vitamin lunch.

Ingredients:

• cabbage - 1 piece (medium-sized forks);
• champignons - 500 grams;
• tomato paste or ketchup - 300 grams;
• onion - 1 piece;
• round-grain rice - 200 grams;
• salt to taste;
• ground black pepper - to taste;
• bay leaf - 1-2 pieces.

Lean stuffed cabbage with mushrooms. Step by step recipe

Cooking cabbage rolls is a rather long and multi-stage process, but the result is a tasty and satisfying dish.

Stuffed cabbage consists of several components: cabbage and filling. First, prepare the filling.

1. For the filling, we need to boil the rice until half cooked, as they say “by the tooth”. For this, the amount of cereal and liquid should be in a ratio of 1: 1. I prefer round rice, because it is more tender in the filling than long-grain - but this is not important.
2. Separately, cut into small cubes mushrooms and the same size onions.
3. First, fry the mushrooms in vegetable oil, and then fry the onions until golden.
4. Stir fried mushrooms, onions and rice cooked until half cooked in a bowl. Salt, pepper and mix thoroughly.

Tip. If your filling for stuffed cabbage crumbles, you can add an egg - but then the dish will cease to be lean. Also, in the stuffing for lean cabbage rolls, you can add sautéed grated carrots, sweet pepper, chopped into small cubes. There are varieties of cabbage rolls in which boiled millet or buckwheat is used instead of rice.

Now we start cooking cabbage.

1. For cabbage rolls, cabbage leaves need to be steamed. To do this, pour water into a large pot, salt it well and wait until it boils. In the meantime, we cut out a stem (cabbage) from cabbage: this must be done carefully so as not to damage the leaves themselves.

Some housewives instead of ordinary cabbage use Peking or Savoy. In early summer, you can take beet tops for cabbage rolls when the leaves are still young.

We lower the head of cabbage into boiling water and wait for the upper leaves to become a little softer and begin to easily separate from each other.

1. We remove the upper leaves with a fork and let the inner leaves of the cabbage steam up further: we do this with all the cabbage leaves.
2. When the cabbage cools down a bit, you need to cut the stalk from each leaf (thickening).

Tip. You can just beat it a little with a hammer: just do not overdo it so as not to damage the cabbage itself.

1. We begin to twist the cabbage rolls. To do this, in the middle of each sheet, put about a tablespoon of the filling and fold the cabbage rolls. And we begin to twist from the side that is thicker. Then we push the lateral tails into each stuffed cabbage. And so do with each sheet.

There is another way to wrap cabbage rolls, then they resemble peppers in shape. To do this, cut the cabbage leaf along in half. We put the stuffing for stuffed cabbage and turn it so that one corner is sharp, and the edge on the other hand is turned inward.

1. We line the bottom of the pan or the crock-pot with the remaining leaves of cabbage and transfer all the cabbage rolls there. They need to be folded tightly to each other so that the filling does not come out during cooking.

Preparing fill for stuffed cabbage.

1. Since we are preparing lean cabbage rolls, the filling will be on the water. To do this, you can even take that water in which cabbage leaves were steamed. Bring the water to a boil, add tomato paste, a little sugar. Add salt to taste, spices. You can use ketchup.
2. If we cook ordinary cabbage rolls, then instead of water, you can take whey or add a few tablespoons of sour cream to the fill.
3. Fill our cabbage rolls with tomato sauce, cover with the remaining leaves of cabbage from above. The fill should cover all the cabbage rolls.
4. We set to cook lean cabbage rolls with mushrooms. If you cook cabbage rolls in a pan, then put on a small fire and detect from 55 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes: it all depends on the size of your stuffed cabbage. And if you cook cabbage rolls in a slow cooker, then just set the appropriate mode.
5. Ready-made cabbage rolls are served hot: you can pour over the sauce in which they were cooked. You can squeeze a little greens and pour the garlic sauce.

There are many varieties of this wonderful Ukrainian dish: for example, rice for the filling is boiled in milk, or vegetarian cabbage rolls. You can find other varieties of cabbage rolls on our site “I like to cook”. I wish you all bon appetit and new interesting recipes.