Lenten cabbage rolls are traditionally served on the Christmas Eve table - evening on the eve of Christmas. Since the holiday menu does not allow the preparation of meat dishes, cabbage leaves are not wrapped with minced meat, but with a filling of rice and mushrooms. It turns out a very tasty lean dish. About how to cook cabbage rolls with rice and mushrooms, we will tell in our article. Here we will reveal all the secrets of cooking this dish.
The secrets of cooking lean cabbage
When cooking cabbage rolls, the following recommendations should be considered that will help improve the taste of the finished dish:
- Cabbage with dense and even leaves is suitable for cabbage rolls.
- If the filling cannot be wrapped in cabbage leaf, you can use simple cotton threads, which must be removed before serving.
- Before stewing stuffed cabbage with rice and mushrooms, it is recommended to fry in vegetable oil on both sides, then they will better keep their shape.
- Instead of rice, other cereals can be used to prepare the filling, for example, pearl barley, buckwheat, millet and others.
How to prepare cabbage leaves
When cooking cabbage rolls, many housewives are scared by the procedure for removing cabbage leaves from a head of cabbage. This is one of the most laborious moments, which requires much more time than necessary to prepare the filling.
Sheets of cabbage can be removed from the head in the following ways:
- Around the stump make cuts with a knife, and then lower the head of cabbage into boiling water for 5 minutes. After a while, get the cabbage out of the water, remove the top leaves, and repeat the same steps again until the right amount of leaves is collected.
- Put the prepared cabbage not in boiling water, but in the microwave for 10 minutes at the highest power. After that, the leaves can be easily separated from the head of cabbage.
- Freeze cabbage, then transfer it to a plate and leave at room temperature for several hours.
When the leaves from the cabbage are separated, you need to remember to cut off from them thick veins located at the base of the head of cabbage. After that, you can continue to cook cabbage rolls with rice and mushrooms. They will surely turn out to be very tender and tasty.
Lean stuffed cabbage with rice and mushrooms
One of the main dishes of the Christmas Eve can be cooked by any housewife, and this will take even less time than with minced meat. You can choose any mushrooms: dried, frozen, and fresh. Champignons are perfect, and with porcini mushrooms the filling will be very aromatic.
You can learn how to cook cabbage rolls with rice and mushrooms from the following step-by-step instructions:
- Prepare cabbage leaves according to one of the methods proposed above.
- Boil round grain rice (200 g) until half cooked, taking for this half the water than usual (250 ml).
- Onion (2 pcs.) And champignons (350 g), passer until tender.
- Fry grated carrots in a separate pan.
- Cut 100 g of black olives into rings.
- Combine all the ingredients for the filling: cooled rice, mushrooms with onions, carrots and olives. Add salt and pepper to your liking.
- Prepare cabbage rolls by wrapping the filling in cabbage leaves with an envelope.
- Fry the cabbage rolls in a pan and put them in a pan on a “pillow” made of diced onions and carrots (1 pc.).
- Pour stuffed cabbage with water, after adding tomato paste (2 tbsp. Tablespoons) to it.
- Stuff cabbage rolls over low heat for about 20 minutes or until tender.
Stuffed cabbage with rice and mushrooms in a slow cooker
Stuffing for stuffed cabbage in a slow cooker is prepared on the basis of dried mushrooms. But if necessary, they can be completely replaced with fresh ones in a ratio of 1: 6 (based on 50 g of dried = 300 g of fresh).
Step by step cooking takes place in the following sequence:
- Dried mushrooms (50 g) pour cold water for 1 hour, then chop with a knife.
- Boil long rice until half cooked (take 1 cup of cold water for 1 cup of rice).
- Fry the mushrooms in vegetable oil.
- Passion onions and carrots (2 each) in a small amount of vegetable oil.
- Mix the cooled ingredients for the filling in one bowl.
- Put the filling in the prepared cabbage leaves.
- Cover the bottom of the multicooker with cabbage leaves, spread the stuffed cabbage on top, which again close with cabbage leaves.
- Pour the cabbage rolls with water and add a tablespoon of vinegar.
- The recipe for stuffed cabbage with mushrooms and rice involves cooking them in a slow cooker in the "Stew" mode for 40 minutes.
The finished dish is served at the table with sour cream and herbs.
Oven baked stuffed cabbage
In the oven, you can also cook very tasty and healthy cabbage rolls. Their recipe is as follows:
- The filling is prepared from rice cooked until half cooked (200 g), fried onions, carrots and mushrooms (600 g).
- The prepared filling is laid out on the leaves and wrapped.
- Sauce is being prepared. To do this, fry the onions in a stewpan, add salt (1 tsp) and sugar (2 tbsp), squeezed garlic and tomatoes in their own juice (1 l), previously crushed in a blender. The sauce is cooked to a thick consistency for about 20 minutes.
- In a deep baking dish, a little sauce is poured into the bottom, cabbage rolls are distributed on top, and the remaining sauce is laid out. The mold is covered with foil and sent to the preheated oven for 30 minutes, baked at a temperature of 180 °. The remaining 20 minutes, lean cabbage rolls with rice and mushrooms will be cooked without foil. The result is a very tasty and healthy dish in the oven.
Stuffed cabbage with mushrooms and Beijing cabbage rice
Instead of cabbage, you can use savoy or Peking cabbage with more delicate leaves when making cabbage. They are very well separated from the head, so that it does not have to be lowered in boiling water. To make it easier to work with leaves, they are simply sent for 1 minute to the microwave.
Stuffing for stuffed cabbage is prepared from rice (1.5 tbsp.) And mushrooms with onions (300 g). Fresh mushrooms and frozen forest mushrooms are also suitable. Next, the filling is wrapped in a leaf of cabbage. Stuffed cabbage with rice and mushrooms are fried in vegetable oil, poured with water with diluted tomato paste (1.5 tbsp. In a glass of boiling water) and stewed for about 30 minutes on low heat. Served hot with sour cream and herbs.