In culinary there is such a pattern: once a dish becomes popular, its "lazy" counterpart immediately appears. Sometimes a recipe is born out of the cook's usual desire to simplify the cooking process. But quite often, the culinary drive is the thirst for innovation. One way or another, but in cookbooks lazy dumplings (something like Russian lasagna), dumplings (sticks), cutlets, chops, whites and even khachapuri occupy a worthy place. These recipes are a godsend for those who do not have the time or special desire to cook. And this article will be devoted to lazy cabbage rolls. The recipes for this dish are quite simple. You can make it in a cauldron, in a frying pan, in the oven or in a simple pan. And for its preparation, you can use modern kitchen appliances, for example, a slow cooker.
Stuffed cabbage story
The dish itself was born in the Roman Empire about two thousand years ago, and then gradually spread throughout Europe. Naturally, the ancient recipe in various regions was modified. In southern countries, minced meat continues to be wrapped in grape leaves. And in the north they use cabbage - fresh or pickled.
The filling has undergone even more variations. In the classic recipe for lazy cabbage rolls, the main ingredient is minced meat mixed with rice. But in Ukraine, where the dish is extremely popular, the filling can be from buckwheat, corn grits, mushrooms, boiled eggs. There are absolutely lean cabbage rolls - a ritual dish that is customary to eat on Christmas Eve. In Lviv, you will be served cabbage rolls with grated potatoes in mushroom sauce. And in Belarus, barley is added to barley instead of rice. All these variations are quite appropriate to use in the "lazy" recipe. It differs from the classical one not in the composition of the ingredients, but only in its form. Cabbage is mixed with minced meat or laid in layers. Therefore, the recipe is called "lazy." After all, in this case, the cook does not need to wrap the filling in cabbage leaves.
Simple lazy cabbage rolls
If you already have minced meat, the whole cooking process will take you a maximum of 40 minutes. In the case when you have only meat, you need to chop it. It is best to use mixed minced meat. Now we turn to the preparation itself:
- 300 grams of beef and pork are passed through a meat grinder.
- Now finely chop the vegetables - two onions and three cloves of garlic. And we’ll rub the carrots large. We pass onion with garlic in vegetable oil. Add carrots, fry until it becomes soft.
- At the same time, we fill up an incomplete glass of rice in half a liter of boiling salted water. And you can pre-dissolve the bouillon cube in hot liquid - this way we will get even more delicious lazy cabbage rolls. Cook rice until half cooked for about ten minutes. Tilt the cereal onto a fine sieve. We rinse with cold water.
- Shred the head of cabbage (700-800 grams). Three tomatoes are cut in half, chopped on a grater, leaving the skins. Pepper and salt. The most lazy cooks can use tomato paste (two spoons). Add minced meat to the pan.
- Mix, salt and fry under the lid for a quarter of an hour. Add the cabbage. Stew another quarter hour. If the cabbage is young, the cooking time should be reduced to 7 minutes.
- Add rice and tomatoes. Sprinkle with chopped herbs. Stir, simmer another five minutes.
Sauce
Gravy to lazy cabbage rolls, as to ordinary, can be simple sour cream. And some people like to eat this dish with ketchup. But if you have the time and inspiration, you can prepare some special gravy. Lazy cabbage rolls are served in sour cream sauce, tomato, cream, mushroom, mustard, under bechamel, olandesa, mayonnaise. Sometimes they are poured with an already prepared dish lying on a plate. But there are recipes in which the sauce is added to lazy cabbage rolls. As a rule, this is done at the end of the culinary process, and then the dish is also sent to the oven or stewed over low heat under a lid. Here is one such recipe.
Lazy cabbage rolls in the form of meatballs
First, boil a glass of rice until half ready. Pass through a meat grinder:
- carrots
- onion
- half a kilogram of white cabbage (without stalk)
- 200-300 grams of pork and beef.
We drive an egg into this mass, salt to taste, season with spices for cutlets. Knead. Add two tablespoons of flour. It may need more - based on how juicy your cabbage is. It is necessary that the mass is sufficiently viscous for the modeling of cutlets. We put our products in a form greased with vegetable oil or a baking sheet. Dilute sour cream (250 grams) with a glass of warm boiled water. Add three tablespoons of tomato paste. Knead and salt to taste. Pour cutlets with this sauce. If you do not like the taste of tomatoes, you can exclude tomato paste from the recipe. Then get lazy cabbage rolls in sour cream sauce. The density of gravy can be adjusted with flour. It is better to dilute sour cream not with water, but with milk or cream. We put the baking sheet in the oven, heated up to 220 degrees. Bake for about half an hour.
Big lazy stuffed cabbage
This dish is cooked in the oven. A casserole comes out, which is then cut into portioned pieces. To save time, we will prepare such lazy cabbage rolls with Beijing cabbage.
- We put rice to cook according to the recipe indicated above. You can use a special bag with cereal for simplicity. For the dish we need one hundred grams of rice. It must be cooked to the state of al-dente (grains should already be chewed, but still remain solid).
- Chop the onion, carrots, half red bell pepper and two garlic cloves. Fry vegetables in vegetable oil.
- Shred 300 grams of Beijing cabbage. We combine vegetable frying, half-finished rice, a pound of raw minced meat. Add the cabbage, knead. We drive in the egg, salt, season with spices. Knead again.
- Grease a baking dish with vegetable oil. We put the mass there, slightly tamping. Add a little Dijon mustard to a tablespoon of mayonnaise. Knead and grease with this sauce the surface of lazy cabbage. We place the form in an oven preheated to 190 degrees. Bake for about forty minutes. Cool slightly, cut into portions and serve with sour cream.
Lazy cabbage rolls in layers
We have already given the simplest recipe for a dish. It turns out one mass in which rice, cabbage and minced meat are combined. And what will happen if the three main components of the dish are laid in layers? It is best to cook such lazy cabbage rolls with minced meat and rice (but it is also possible with chopped chicken meat) in a cast-iron cauldron.
Note that this recipe is suitable for both fresh and sauerkraut. In the first case, we remove the stump without cutting the head of cabbage. Boil cabbage for five minutes in salted water. We recline in a colander. We cook a glass of rice until half-ready, strain it from the water through a sieve. Finely chop the onion, pass, mix with minced meat.
There is also a recipe for preparing lazy cabbage rolls in layers with mushrooms. In this case, the mushrooms need to be fried in oil. Meat or mushrooms require 300-400 grams. We make a vegetable layer: bell pepper and two tomatoes, cut into strips, chop the onion and fry it all in a mixture of butter and vegetable oils. The cooled head we take apart into leaves.
Lubricate the cauldron with vegetable oil. We lay on the bottom a quarter of the cabbage leaves. Place a third of the minced meat (or mushrooms) on top. We coat with sour cream. We spread a third of vegetables. Repeat the layers until the last quarter of the cabbage is on top. Pour water into the cauldron so that it covers the top of the casserole. Stew for about an hour under the lid and 20 minutes without it.
Sauerkraut
This recipe for making lazy cabbage rolls is good because you don’t have to spend time chopping it. If the cabbage is too acidic, it can be held in warm water, and just rinse to taste. We take a frying pan with high sides or an ordinary pan. Pour 30 ml of vegetable oil. We pass on it a finely chopped onion. When it reaches a golden hue, add a pound of sauerkraut. Fry for ten minutes and add a tablespoon of ketchup or tomato paste. After 8 minutes put in a pan or pan 400 grams of minced meat. Mix. Stew for another 10 minutes. Pour a hundred grams of rice cereal. Immediately pour a glass of broth. Salt, add black pepper and other spices. Stew under the lid for another 20 minutes. Turn off the fire, and let the dish brew for a quarter of an hour.
Lazy cabbage rolls in a pan
This recipe is suitable for those who want to cook in large quantities. First boil rice to al dente. To do this, pour a glass of cereal with twice as much boiling water. Boil for 5-8 minutes. A small head of cabbage must be chopped very finely or chopped in a blender. We cut two onions, mix with a kilogram of minced meat, rice, cabbage. Let's beat in an egg, salt the mass and season it with spices. We blind the patties and fry them in a skillet in vegetable oil.
Put the items in a large pot. We put cutlets tightly to each other. In the pan, lazy cabbage rolls have a long cooking time. Therefore, they need to be poured with a large amount of liquid. In two liters of drinking water, we dilute 400 ml of fat sour cream and seven tablespoons of ketchup. Add three bay leaves, four peppercorns, a teaspoon of salt and other spices to the sauce. We pour this dressing into the pan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the flame to a minimum and simmer under the lid for an hour.
In the oven
We have already examined this cooking method using the example of lazy cabbage rolls with Beijing cabbage. But they can be made from the usual, white. In this recipe we will use sauerkraut, and buckwheat instead of rice. Note that the cereals need to be boiled until fully cooked. We will need two glasses of buckwheat porridge. We combine it in a bowl with a kilogram of minced pork, 600 g of sauerkraut and washed cabbage, two finely chopped onions and fried until golden. We beat in two eggs, salt, add a mixture of peppers and other seasonings. We cover the baking sheet with baking paper. Knead the mass and form round cutlets. Wrap a baking sheet with products with foil. We leave to bake for 45 minutes at 200 ° C. A quarter of an hour before being ready, we remove the foil so that a delicious crusty crust appears on delicious lazy cabbage rolls.
In the pan
This cooking method has its own nuances. So, it is required that rice (200 grams) be completely boiled. Shred a small head of cabbage finely and fry in vegetable oil until the moisture evaporates completely. Knead with half a kilogram of raw minced meat and rice porridge. In a pan, fry finely chopped onion with carrot. Add to the total mass with chopped parsley. We drive in the egg, salt, season with spices. We form cutlets. Fry them from two sides to a crust. A glass of tomato juice is mixed with 150 grams of sour cream. Pour the cutlet with this mix. Lazy cabbage rolls in tomato sauce should obscure under the lid for about 45 minutes.
In a slow cooker
We wash the rice (150 g), and then soak it in hot water. We chop the kilogram head. We remember the cabbage lightly with our hands so that the juice began to stand out. Cut the onion, rub the carrots, squeeze two garlic cloves through a press, divide three tomatoes into quarters, finely chop a bunch of fresh herbs. Pour oil into the multicooker bowl. First, fry the carrots with onions. Mix these vegetables with half a kilogram of minced meat, rice porridge, garlic, herbs and cabbage. Grind tomatoes in a blender. Mix the tomato puree with a glass of milk and three cups of water. Add salt and spices to the dressing. We put lazy cabbage rolls with rice in a slow cooker, pour sauce. If there is not enough liquid, add milk. Set the "Extinguishing" mode, cover with a lid. The dish should be ready in an hour and a half.