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How to prepare dolma from grape leaves at home? How to cook dolma from grape leaves How long to cook dolma from grape leaves.

At home, you can use a variety of devices to boil dolma. The time spent on this process will depend on the exposure option. For example, to prepare a product from minced meat and grape leaves (dolma) in the traditional way, you will have to spend about 45-50 minutes.

You need to cook it in a slow cooker and a double boiler. 1 hour. The fastest way to boil a semi-finished product is in the microwave; it takes no more than 15 minutes. But when choosing the optimal treatment option, you must be guided not by how much time you will have to spend on bringing the component to readiness, but by the taste and aroma of the final result.

Important and useful facts about dolma

Before you start preparing dolma or boiling a semi-finished product, you should learn more about the features and characteristics of this dish. This will allow you to get the most tasty and aromatic delicacy, and not boiled minced meat in a shell of grape leaves.

A real Armenian dish is prepared from minced lamb, but products made from beef or pork are also acceptable. But poultry meat in this case is considered an absolutely unsuccessful option.
Dolma does not have to be boiled in water. The dish will turn out more juicy and rich if you use meat broth or a bouillon cube as a medium.
In addition to grape leaves, minced meat is wrapped in eggplant, beet and even sorrel leaves.
By the way, the leaves are not necessarily taken fresh; salted ones cope with the task no less successfully. When choosing a fresh component, you need to remember that it should be light, i.e. young. But it is better to avoid very large and dark elements; no matter how much you process them, you will not achieve the required degree of softness.

Tip: If you want to give a familiar dish a more refined taste, then it is recommended to add, in addition to onions, herbs and peppers, a little grated carrots and pumpkin to the minced meat.

Boiling water is used to soften grape leaves. Young elements are simply scalded, and older ones are boiled for 3-5 minutes. Considering the fact that this nuance is often ignored by manufacturers of semi-finished products, it is better to prepare dolma yourself from start to finish.
It is worth considering that this dish should be steamed, not fried, so be sure to line the bottom of the cooking container with leaves (grape or at least cabbage). An additional advantage of this technique is that the dolma will be much juicier.

The finished dolma does not have to be served hot right away. The dish will seem no less tasty after it has cooled, but it must be served with herbs and lemon. Sour cream sauce would be a good addition.

How to cook dolma correctly?

In the case of boiling dolma, an important role is played not only by how long the processing will last, but also by how to organize it. Here are basic recommendations for processes depending on the impact option.

In a saucepan.

We take a container with a thick bottom, lay out a layer of grape leaves, and place dolma on them in one layer. Fill it all with water so that the water covers the entire structure by 1 cm. Next, lay out another layer of the product and cover it all with grape leaves. If the product begins to float, then press down the mass with an inverted plate of a suitable diameter. Cover the pan with a lid. Cook the contents over low heat for 45-50 minutes after boiling.

In a steamer.

Here everything is much simpler, because the dolma will be covered with steam in any case. You just need to place the blanks in the appropriate bowl (for this, they usually use a stand with holes so that the juice does not accumulate and soften the leaves too much) and set the timer for 1 hour. If the device takes a long time to start up, then we note the hour from the moment the steam is supplied. In a slow cooker.

It is not recommended to boil dolma in a pressure cooker, because... It will be difficult to choose the optimal temperature and duration of exposure. But a pressure cooker will give good results. The holding time will also be from 50 minutes to an hour. As a last resort, the semi-finished product can be boiled in a colander secured over a pan of boiling water.

Sometimes no tricks for boiling dolma help. Most likely, this simply indicates the low quality of the workpieces. To avoid such a problem, you need to prepare the dish yourself, especially since it is quite simple.

To prepare the minced meat, we need 300 g of lamb, an onion, three tablespoons of rice, salt and pepper. Additionally, we take 7-8 salted or fresh grape leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, herbs, half a glass of sour cream.
Soak the rice in hot water for 10 minutes, mix with minced lamb, grated onion, add salt. If salted leaves are used, they should be poured with boiling water and left for 12 hours to get rid of excess salt. Immediately before use, cut the cuttings from the elements.
We lay out the sheet, put the prepared minced meat on it, and wrap it so that we get a small sausage. Boil the resulting preparations using one of the methods listed above.
While the dolma is cooking, prepare a sauce from sour cream and grated garlic. Serve the finished dish with sauce and chopped herbs.

It is worth considering that the quality of the leaves used may affect the taste characteristics of the finished product. If you prepare dolma from fresh leaves, then salt the minced meat well and do not forget to add the water in which the components are cooked. But salted leaves, even soaked ones, will already fill the product with the required degree of salinity. But even in this case, you will have to add a little salt and pepper to the minced meat. In general, all the nuances of processing semi-finished products become obvious only with experience.

Having tried dolma, many become “fans” of this dish. No wonder the dish has become popular, as it is very easy to prepare. However, in order to cook it correctly, you should know how long to cook dolma.

Cooking time

Cooking dolma takes 40-50 minutes. It is better to cook in a pan with thick walls. If dolma is cooked from grape leaves, then they are placed from below, at the beginning of cooking. Then the entire product is filled with water, which should completely cover the contents. However, it should not be allowed to reach the edges. Cook on low heat.

It takes 1.5 hours to cook dolma in a double boiler. If dolma is cooked in a slow cooker, you need to select the “Stew” mode.

Cooking dolma

In a saucepan

- When cooking dolma from grape leaves, you need to place them on the bottom at the very beginning. Then place the dolma and fill it with water.

Cover the top of the dolma with grape leaves again.

Cook over low heat for 45 minutes.

Important: to avoid the rolls falling apart, it is better to cover them with a plate and cover the pan with a lid.

In a slow cooker

Pour water (more than half) into a special container.
Place dolma in a cooking bowl.
Turn on the “Extinguishing” mode. It takes 1 hour to cook.

In the microwave

- Place food in a microwave-safe container.

After adding a little salt, it is advisable to add butter and water (a glass).

Cover the dolma of grape leaves with a special lid.
Heat at 800 W for 15 minutes.

What to serve the dish with

Classical

To prepare this sauce, chop the garlic and mix with sour cream. If there is no sour cream nearby, yogurt can replace it.

Kefir

Place chopped garlic in a glass of kefir. You can also add any greens you like.

Sauce with dried apricots

Mix onion and dried apricots. Mix pepper and cinnamon in a 1:1 ratio. Then you need to simmer the entire mixture in a frying pan, covering it with a lid. Cooking time is 10 minutes. Add salt (1-2 tsp), sugar (2 tbsp), and tomato paste to the mixture.

Proper preparation

Considering how long the dolma is cooked depends on whether the dolma will taste good. But to cook properly, both time and approach to cooking are important. To make food tasty, it is useful to know some facts.

- When pouring water into a dolma, it is worth checking whether it floats up or not. If the food remains under water, there is no need to cover the pan with a lid.

Most often, dolma is cooked from grape leaves, however, this is not the only cooking method. You can replace grape leaves with cabbage or eggplant leaves.

In some recipes it is customary to cook by adding tomatoes, apples, beets, onions, etc. By adding these products, the taste will not deteriorate, but will be very different from standard preparation. The shape of the dish may also change.

Grape leaves can be either fresh or salted. When choosing leaves, you should pay attention to their tone. It is advisable to purchase light leaves, since they are the youngest, therefore, the dish will turn out to be very tender.

To make the taste more refined, you can add carrots after cooking.

Dolma is made from minced meat, however, it can be replaced with a mixture of rice and vegetables.

If you purchased large dark-colored grape leaves, in order not to spoil the taste and make the dolma softer, it is advisable to place them in boiling water for several minutes before cooking.

Alexander Gushchin

I can’t vouch for the taste, but it will be hot :)

Content

Stuffed cabbage rolls are popular in our national cuisine, but traditional recipes from southern countries involve preparing a very similar dish not from cabbage, but based on young, tender grape leaves. Dolma is served as a cold or hot appetizer; it is popular in Armenia, Georgia and Greece. Any housewife can master the recipe.

How to cook dolma from grape leaves

To learn how to cook dolma from grape leaves, you need to choose the appropriate minced meat for the filling. Traditionally, it is made from lamb with the addition of rice and national spices, but you can try recipes based on pork or beef. In addition, it is recommended to add onions to the minced meat. The specifics of further preparation depend on the characteristics of the national cuisine: some cook dolma, some stew it, and some fry it. This dish can be served with white sauce or a dressing of fried vegetables.

Grape leaves for dolma

Experienced housewives from southern countries know that the best time to prepare real dolma is the beginning of June, when the greenery on the trees is just blooming and the young leaves of the grapes still retain a delicate light green color. It is recommended to choose small ones (about the size of a woman’s palm), and before cooking, immerse them in boiling and salted water for two to three minutes, and then pour over ice water.

If you are interested in learning how to prepare dolma from grape leaves, regardless of the time of year, you can master the traditional Armenian recipe, according to which the leaves should be rolled into tubes, first tied with threads, poured with a rich salt broth (a tablespoon of salt per glass of water) and rolled into sterilized jars. This canned product can be stored for a very long time.

Recipe for dolma with grape leaves

Any housewife can prepare this dish deliciously if she remembers exactly what components the minced meat includes and how long to cook dolma from grape leaves. It’s difficult to immediately determine which recipe tastes best - it’s better to try cooking according to Greek, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian canons, and then choose something of your own. Gourmets are more likely to appreciate classic homemade recipes of national cuisine.

Dolma in grape leaves in Armenian

In order to master the Armenian version of the dish, it will take very little time. The recipe for dolma from grape leaves in Armenian involves the following components:

fatty minced meat from a mixture of beef and pork – 1 kg;
onions – 2-3 pcs.;
dried basil and rosemary;
red and black peppers;
salt;
pickled and salted leaves.

Follow a simple algorithm:

Mix the minced meat with raw rice, spices and herbs, add a couple of tablespoons of meat broth (or clean water). Leave for 30 minutes.
Free the leaves from the brine and dry.
Place a couple of teaspoons of minced meat in the center of each leaf and wrap the cabbage roll.
Place the rolls in a ceramic pan very tightly to each other. Fill with water until it covers the entire dolma.
Place on low heat and leave for 40 minutes. Before serving, you can add butter or white matsoni sauce.

Dolma in grape leaves in Azerbaijani style

It is known that the Azerbaijani recipe is not too different from the previous one, but lamb is preferred here - this meat corresponds to the canons of national oriental cuisine. You will need:

lamb (back leg) – 1 kg;
tail fat – 50 g;
rice (can be long grain) – 100 g;
onions – 2 pcs.;
fresh mint;
fresh cilantro;
leaves;
salt pepper.

The step-by-step preparation is very simple:

Pass the lamb and onion through a meat grinder (it would be better to use a large attachment), add rice and herbs. Pour in half a glass of warm water.
Rinse the leaves from brine and dry.
Place a reliable plate (for example, made of tempered glass) on the bottom of the pan.
Wrap the rolls. Place in the pan so that the cabbage rolls fit tightly together.
Top with another plate. The dish will cook for about 40 minutes.
While the cabbage rolls are cooking, you can make the matsoni sauce.

Greek dolma made from fresh grape leaves

The dish served in Greece will also be called dolmadakya or dolmades, a name that comes from Turkish culture and means “to wrap foods one inside another.” Keep in mind that the greens must be fresh, and meat is not included in this recipe. Dolmades are usually served among cold appetizers along with traditional Greek tzatziki sauce made from cucumbers and yogurt. For cooking you will need:

fresh leaves – 20-30 pcs.;
rice – 200 g;
bulb;
fresh herbs: cilantro, basil, mint;
eggplant – 1 pc.;
olive oil.

Follow the step by step instructions:

Young grape leaves need to be boiled in salted water for two to three minutes in advance.
Grate the eggplant, coarsely chop the herbs and mix with rice and olive oil.
Lightly simmer the filling in the pan.
Wrap up the cabbage rolls.
The bottom of the pan should be lined with torn leaves, then the rolls should be placed closer to each other.
Add lemon juice, a spoonful of olive oil, salt and spices.
Fill with water and cook for 40 minutes.

Important and useful facts about dolma

A real Armenian dish is prepared from minced lamb, but products made from beef or pork are also acceptable. But poultry meat in this case is considered an absolutely unsuccessful option.
Dolma does not have to be boiled in water. The dish will turn out more juicy and rich if you use meat broth or a bouillon cube as a medium.
In addition to grape leaves, minced meat is wrapped in eggplant, beet and even sorrel leaves.
By the way, the leaves are not necessarily taken fresh; salted ones cope with the task no less successfully. When choosing a fresh component, you need to remember that it should be light, i.e. young. But it is better to avoid very large and dark elements; no matter how much you process them, you will not achieve the required degree of softness.

Tip: If you want to give a familiar dish a more refined taste, then it is recommended to add, in addition to onions, herbs and peppers, a little grated carrots and pumpkin to the minced meat.

Boiling water is used to soften grape leaves. Young elements are simply scalded, and older ones are boiled for 3-5 minutes. Considering the fact that this nuance is often ignored by manufacturers of semi-finished products, it is better to prepare dolma yourself from start to finish.
It is worth considering that this dish should be steamed, not fried, so be sure to line the bottom of the cooking container with leaves (grape or at least cabbage). An additional advantage of this technique is that the dolma will be much juicier.

How to cook dolma correctly?

In a saucepan.

We take a container with a thick bottom, lay out a layer of grape leaves, and place dolma on them in one layer. Fill it all with water so that the water covers the entire structure by 1 cm. Next, lay out another layer of the product and cover it all with grape leaves. If the product begins to float, then press down the mass with an inverted plate of a suitable diameter. Cover the pan with a lid. Cook the contents over low heat for 45-50 minutes after boiling.

In a steamer.

Here everything is much simpler, because the dolma will be covered with steam in any case. You just need to place the blanks in the appropriate bowl (for this, they usually use a stand with holes so that the juice does not accumulate and soften the leaves too much) and set the timer for 1 hour. If the device takes a long time to start up, then we note the hour from the moment the steam is supplied. In a slow cooker.

To prepare the minced meat, we need 300 g of lamb, an onion, three tablespoons of rice, salt and pepper. Additionally, we take 7-8 salted or fresh grape leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, herbs, half a glass of sour cream.
Soak the rice in hot water for 10 minutes, mix with minced lamb, grated onion, add salt. If salted leaves are used, they should be poured with boiling water and left for 12 hours to get rid of excess salt. Immediately before use, cut the cuttings from the elements.
We lay out the sheet, put the prepared minced meat on it, and wrap it so that we get a small sausage. Boil the resulting preparations using one of the methods listed above.
While the dolma is cooking, prepare a sauce from sour cream and grated garlic. Serve the finished dish with sauce and chopped herbs.

In Russian cuisine, such a dish as cabbage rolls is widely known. It consists of minced meat wrapped in cabbage leaves. However, many housewives also cook lean cabbage rolls with mushrooms or vegetables inside. But in Caucasian cuisine, the filling based on boiled rice is wrapped in grape leaves - fresh or pickled. This dish is called dolma. Wrapped in small “stuffed cabbage rolls,” they are traditionally boiled in meat broth and served with sour cream sauce. Every kitchen has its own secrets for preparing this dish. We will tell you how to prepare dolma in our article. We will offer several interesting recipes to choose from, including ones for the oven and multicooker.

Most advice from experienced chefs on how to cook dolma boils down to preparing the leaves for this dish.

Firstly, they should only be collected in the spring. Old grape leaves are only suitable for laying them on the bottom of the pan during cooking.

Secondly, it is advisable to pickle the leaves in a jar in advance. Then in the finished dish they will be more tender and soft.

Thirdly, be sure to cut out the hard veins. They can ruin the taste of the dish.

Marinating leaves for dolma

Traditionally, salted (pickled) grape leaves are used to prepare this dish. But this does not mean that you can go up to any bush and pick them to your heart's content. Only white grape leaves are suitable for dolma. They should be young, relatively clean, with a glossy surface and without rough veins.

The leaves are carried out in the following sequence:

Leaves picked from a bush of a suitable variety (60 pieces) are soaked in a bowl of cold water for about 1 hour.
On the stove, boiling water is prepared for blanching in a large saucepan.
After the time has passed, the soaked leaves are immersed in boiling water for exactly 1 minute and immediately transferred to a clean and deep bowl.
On a flat surface, the cooled leaves are stacked in stacks of 10 pieces each. Their edges bend towards the center. After this, the stack is rolled up and placed in a clean jar of a suitable size.
The remaining leaves are prepared in the same way. They all go into the jar.
Spices are poured on top: dry mustard and salt (1 tsp each), a pinch of ground black pepper. Stacks of leaves are poured with boiling water.
The jar is closed with a nylon lid and sent to a cold place to infuse for three months.
After this time, you can start preparing real dolma from pickled grape leaves.

Preparing the filling for the dish

It is no coincidence that in the Caucasus, rice-based minced meat is wrapped in grape leaves rather than cabbage leaves, because they contain a whole host of substances beneficial to the body. Therefore, at the end of spring, while the leaves are still young and glossy, it is recommended to collect and pickle them in order to enjoy the pleasant taste of this oriental dish in winter.

For classic dolma you will need 50 pieces of pickled grape leaves and 500 ml of meat broth. They must be prepared in advance. Then the filling is prepared in this order:

Half a glass of rice is poured into a bowl and washed 5-6 times in cold water until it becomes clear.
Pour boiling water over clean rice and set aside for a few minutes. During this time it should steam well. Or you can cook the rice on the stove until half cooked.
Onions (2 pcs.) are fried in a frying pan with vegetable oil. As soon as it becomes transparent, steamed rice is added to it. Together with the onions, it cooks for a few more minutes.
In a separate bowl, 500 g of minced meat (lamb and beef) is mixed with finely chopped parsley, dried basil, mint, salt and pepper.
The meat part of the filling is combined with the rice part.
Now you can start forming the “stuffed cabbage rolls”.

Technology for preparing dolma at home

As mentioned above, for this dish you should use young grape leaves collected in the spring. They are preserved for a year in advance, and, if necessary, used to prepare dolma.

The hard petiole part of the grape leaves should be removed. It will only interfere with the formation of the “stuffed cabbage roll”. If the leaves are damaged, do not rush to throw them away. They will be needed for the lining of the cauldron.

Now you can start forming the “stuffed cabbage roll”:

Arrange the leaves with the smooth side down and the veins facing up.
Place the filling closer to the middle.
Fold the bottom of the sheet inward, and then the sides.
Roll the sheet into a tube.
Prepare the rest of the dolma in the same way. From the above amount of minced meat you should get 50-60 pieces of products.

Grape leaves are distributed along the bottom of the cauldron, and dolma is laid on top, seam side down. The top of the cabbage rolls is covered with the remaining leaves and filled with water or broth. It is recommended to use a flat plate as a load, which will not allow the products to unfold.

Cook dolma over low heat for about 1.5 hours. 20 minutes after the end of cooking, the dish can be served.

Unlike traditional cabbage rolls, this oriental dish is not stewed in sauce, but in meat broth or water. And this is quite enough to make the dolma juicy and tasty. But the finished dish is served with sauce, and ideally it should be sour cream. If desired, garlic and herbs are added to it.

Dolma sauce is very easy to prepare:

Place 200 ml of sour cream in a bowl.
Dill is finely chopped.
Garlic is squeezed out through a press.
All ingredients are added to sour cream.
The sauce is thoroughly mixed and placed on top of the dolma. Add salt and black pepper if desired.

Dolma in tomato sauce (from fresh leaves)

The next option for preparing a popular Caucasian dish is to perform the following procedure:

Fresh grape leaves (60-70 pcs.) are poured with boiling water for 10 minutes. After this, they need to be taken out of the water and cooled.
Rice (100 g) is thoroughly washed several times and boiled until half cooked. You can also pour boiling water over it for 20 minutes, then drain the water and add the swollen cereal to the minced meat (600 g).
Finely chop 1 onion, a bunch of parsley and cilantro.
combines with chopped onions and herbs. Add salt and black pepper to taste.
A spoonful of filling is placed on the wide part of the grape leaf, after which it is wrapped, like a traditional cabbage roll.
The formed products are placed in a pan and poured with sauce. To prepare it, fry 2 onions in vegetable oil, add 6-7 diced tomatoes, salt and pepper. As soon as the tomatoes release their juice, add 200 ml of broth. Immediately add suneli hops (2 tbsp) and a few cloves of garlic.
Dolma in grape leaves is cooked for about 45 minutes under a lid over low heat. Served with tomato sauce in which it was stewed.

Dolma recipe in a slow cooker

A kitchen assistant makes life in the kitchen much easier for housewives. Cooking dolma in it, as in a thick-walled pan on the stove, is not at all difficult:

First you need to make the filling. To do this, mix minced meat (400 g) with sauteed onion, washed raw rice (3 tbsp), salt, finely chopped herbs and a piece of butter (40 g).
Spoon the filling onto fresh or salted leaves. Wrap the products like traditional cabbage rolls and place them in the multicooker bowl. The dolma should be distributed in layers in the multicooker, and don’t forget to place lemon slices between each layer.
Fill the dish with water so that it barely covers the products.
Set the cooking mode to “Stew” for 90 minutes. After the specified time, the dish will be ready.

Below we offer a recipe for preparing an oriental dish not on the stove, but in the oven:

For dolma, take 5 tablespoons of boiled steamed rice and 300 g of minced beef.
The onions for the filling are pre-sautéed in vegetable oil until golden brown. As soon as the vegetable fry has cooled, it is combined with the rice and meat mass.
Salt, pepper, herbs, and suneli hops are added to the filling to taste.
The prepared minced meat is placed in the middle of a leaf blanched with boiling water or salted and wrapped in a roll. All products are formed in a similar way.
Dolma is laid out in a baking dish and filled with water. The top of the dish is covered with a lid or covered with foil.
In the oven at a temperature of 170 degrees, cook dolma, as on the stove, for 1 hour. The finished dish is served with sauce.

Lenten dolma

The following dish will help diversify your diet during Lent. The filling for dolma according to a home recipe includes only rice, herbs and spices. But this makes the dish no less satisfying and tasty.

To prepare the filling, sauté onions (2 pieces) in ¼ cup of olive oil in a frying pan. After a couple of minutes, rice washed in clean water (2 ½ cups) is added. As soon as the oil is absorbed into the cereal, you can add water (2 tbsp.) and add salt. Next, the rice will be cooked in a frying pan under the lid until all the liquid is absorbed. Add green onions, dill, several mint leaves and parsley to the cooled mass. The finished filling is wrapped in leaves.

Dolma is placed in a pan with a thick bottom. Squeeze the juice of two lemons on top and add a cup of olive oil. Dolma is filled with water and placed on the stove for 1 hour.

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