Day Five: Golubtsy (Stuffed Cabbage Rolls)

I did not eat golubtsy while I was in Russia, so I can't begin this entry with a picture or a story. I previously had the Polish, Bulgarian, and Greek variants of this dish (the latter two were wrapped with grape leaves), so when I found a recipe for golubtsy in The Russian Heritage Cookbook, I decided to try it out.

Click the link below to get to the cooking!

The first step involves getting the cabbage ready.

Peeling cabbage leaves off of a cabbage head without mutilating them is impossible, so I did the best I could. I rinsed each leaf and cut the stems off.

The cabbage leaves had to be boiled so they would become flexible. I did this in batches.

Since my stove is awful and has only one high heat burner, I had to wait until the cabbage was done before sauteing the onions in butter.

The filling contained ground beef, a bit of cooked rice, an egg, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Lovingly hand mixed. I waited five minutes for the sauteed onions to cool before adding them in.

The filling is ready! Time to wrap the golubtsy.

I put a good amount of filling in the middle of a cooked cabbage leaf, tucked in the sides, and rolled it the rest of the way. On the left edge of the plate is probably the best-looking roll I had. My mutilated cabbage leaves combined with what was perhaps too much boiling time led the leaves to disintegrate.

Varia-sized golubtsy, how tragic!

More proof that butter makes everything better. By the way, this is me using less butter than the recipe called for.

I put the golubtsy in and browned it for about ten minutes. The recipe said turning it was unnecessary, but I did anyway.

Meanwhile, it's time to get the sauce ready. It consisted of beef broth, tomato sauce, and a heaping helping of sour cream.

This is all of the above along with pan drippings, salt, and pepper. I wasn't sure about the color, but it did taste pretty good.

Strange focus on this picture - sorry!

Before putting the sauce in the pan, I made a roux by whisking equal amounts of salt and flour.

When the flour had cooked a bit, I added in the sauce and whisked it until it was smooth and ready.

If you were wondering where the golubtsy disappeared to, there they are again. I added them and the juices they generated as they were set aside into the pan, covered, and simmered it for less than an hour, stirring the sauce and basting the golubtsy occasionally.

Finished! The sauce looks kind of greasy because of the beef juices, but it recombines when mixed.

I served it with a little bit of sauce on top. Due to the amount of butter and sour cream in this dish, this is about all I could eat of it. It was delicious, however! The slight amount of tomato in the sour cream sauce is a nice accent to the dish and the cabbage is barely there.

The interior of the roll. The rice kind of got lost in it. I suppose that's well and good - if I remember correctly, rice was used as filler.

Here's the too much filling problem again. I wish this didn't happen so often. I cooked up two meat patties out of this and set them aside for breakfast or something.

I don't think I'd make golubtsy too often because of how rich the dish is, but I'm glad I tried it out.