Lebanese-Style Dolmas
Dec. 15th, 2020 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nerwengreenOne pound ground beef
One cup uncooked white rice (washed, soaked, etc.)
One medium onion, finely diced
A few cloves garlic, minced (optional)
One tablespoon cinnamon
One tablespoon cumin
80-100 fresh grape leaves
One medium waxy potato, sliced into thin circles
One lemon, sliced into circles
Olive oil
Garlic salt
To make filling:
Brown the ground beef. Drain if necessary. Try to break it up into tiny crumbles (rice sized ideally).
Stir in the onions and garlic.
Stir in the uncooked rice.
Stir in the cinnamon and cumin.
To prep the grape leaves, for each leaf individually:
Harvest healthy, medium-sized leaves, preferably not too deeply lobed. Cut from the vine as close to the base (where it connects to the vine) as possible. Aim for light green leaves that are still tender, with no blemishes, damage, etc.
Cut the stem off.
(Can pause here.)
Wash to get off all the tiny insects hiding on the underside.
Blanch in boiling hot water until it loses most of the green (20-30 seconds).
To fill the leaves, for each leaf individually:
Lay out leaf flat on a flat surface. Add a teaspoon of filling near the bottom, where the stem was. Shape it into a horizontal line.
Fold the lower lobes of the leaf up over the filling, then the side lobes in. Loosely roll upward so that the top tip of the leaf is on top.
Cooking:
Layer the potato slices to cover the bottom of the pot. Drizzle with olive oil and garlic salt. Stack the dolmas, seam side down. When done, drizzle with more olive oil and garlic salt, then put lemon slices on top. Find a plate that is almost the same width as the inside width of the pot. Put it upside down on top of the lemons. Fill the pot with water up to the level of the dolmas. Cover, simmer for 45 minutes.
The house I currently live in came with a grapevine, and although I'm not that big a fan of grapes, I do like dolmas. My main sources for how to make them came from a Lebanese recipe and a page about how to prep the leaves. The best time to harvest is late spring to early summer (Nov-Dec in the southern hemisphere) when the vine is putting out lots and lots of leaves.
It turns out that blanching the leaves individually is a good idea, even though it seems unnecessary since they're going to get cooked anyway. What it does is make the leaves go limp so that they're easier to roll. The recipes I saw said to plunge them in cold water after blanching, but that doesn't seem to matter as long as you don't leave them in the hot water too long.
The main purpose of the potatoes is to provide insulation from the bottom of the pot for the dolmas. They taste good too afterward, and any remaining liquid in the bottom of the pot is also delicious.
Most restaurant dolmas I've run across seem to be vegetarian and include mint and parsley and other flavors I'm not that fond of. I like that by making my own, I can put in whatever I want.
One cup uncooked white rice (washed, soaked, etc.)
One medium onion, finely diced
A few cloves garlic, minced (optional)
One tablespoon cinnamon
One tablespoon cumin
80-100 fresh grape leaves
One medium waxy potato, sliced into thin circles
One lemon, sliced into circles
Olive oil
Garlic salt
To make filling:
Brown the ground beef. Drain if necessary. Try to break it up into tiny crumbles (rice sized ideally).
Stir in the onions and garlic.
Stir in the uncooked rice.
Stir in the cinnamon and cumin.
To prep the grape leaves, for each leaf individually:
Harvest healthy, medium-sized leaves, preferably not too deeply lobed. Cut from the vine as close to the base (where it connects to the vine) as possible. Aim for light green leaves that are still tender, with no blemishes, damage, etc.
Cut the stem off.
(Can pause here.)
Wash to get off all the tiny insects hiding on the underside.
Blanch in boiling hot water until it loses most of the green (20-30 seconds).
To fill the leaves, for each leaf individually:
Lay out leaf flat on a flat surface. Add a teaspoon of filling near the bottom, where the stem was. Shape it into a horizontal line.
Fold the lower lobes of the leaf up over the filling, then the side lobes in. Loosely roll upward so that the top tip of the leaf is on top.
Cooking:
Layer the potato slices to cover the bottom of the pot. Drizzle with olive oil and garlic salt. Stack the dolmas, seam side down. When done, drizzle with more olive oil and garlic salt, then put lemon slices on top. Find a plate that is almost the same width as the inside width of the pot. Put it upside down on top of the lemons. Fill the pot with water up to the level of the dolmas. Cover, simmer for 45 minutes.
The house I currently live in came with a grapevine, and although I'm not that big a fan of grapes, I do like dolmas. My main sources for how to make them came from a Lebanese recipe and a page about how to prep the leaves. The best time to harvest is late spring to early summer (Nov-Dec in the southern hemisphere) when the vine is putting out lots and lots of leaves.
It turns out that blanching the leaves individually is a good idea, even though it seems unnecessary since they're going to get cooked anyway. What it does is make the leaves go limp so that they're easier to roll. The recipes I saw said to plunge them in cold water after blanching, but that doesn't seem to matter as long as you don't leave them in the hot water too long.
The main purpose of the potatoes is to provide insulation from the bottom of the pot for the dolmas. They taste good too afterward, and any remaining liquid in the bottom of the pot is also delicious.
Most restaurant dolmas I've run across seem to be vegetarian and include mint and parsley and other flavors I'm not that fond of. I like that by making my own, I can put in whatever I want.
