Hungarian style cabbage rolls

Lietuviška versija čia.

In Lithuania, where I came from, we eat cabbage rolls quite often. There we make it with cooked cabbage. But since I tried the Hungarian version with sour cabbage, I thought I will never make the old version again... :) If you like sour cabbage - trying those sour cabbage rolls is just a must ;)

You will need:

• 800 grams of cut sour cabbage
• 8 pickled cabbage leaves - once we used pre-boiled raw cabbage leaves, it was also good. But now we found those in the Hungarian store. Sometimes you can find them in Turkish shop.

• 2 onions
• 1 clove of garlic
• 50 grams of smoked bacon
• 400 grams of ground pork
• 2 teaspoons of sweet paprika powder
• 80 grams of rice
• 1 egg
• 1 pinch of ground cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon of dried marjoram
• 2 tablespoons of oil
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 200 of sour-cream (optional)
• pepper
• salt (optional)

Preparation:

1. Rinse pickled cabbage leaves with cold water, this way some salt is washed away. Cut off thicker veins. Chop the onion and garlic finely, bacon into small cubes.
2. Fry the bacon on a pan, add to the minced meat. Fry the onions. Half of the onions add to the meat.
3. Put one teaspoon of paprika powder into the other half of the fried onions. Add 100 milliliters of water and mix it. Add 400 grams of cut sour cabbage, mix together.
4. Put garlic into the meat mass. Add rice, egg, 1 teaspoon of paprika powder, cumin, marjoram, season with salt (if needed) and pepper. Mix everything together.
5. Form your cabbage rolls: put some of the meat mass on the cabbage, fold the edges and roll it up from the bottom of the leave.
6. Put the cabbage rolls in the pot on top of the sour cabbage with fried onion. (We also put some extra bacon peaces between the cabbage rolls). Sprinkle with the remaining sour cabbage, add water (it should be in the same level like cabbage) and simmer on a low heat covered with the lid. Cook until soft. It should take about 1 hour. Meanwhile you can shake the pot occasionally - hold it in the same position with both of your hands and rotate quickly clockwise and anti-clockwise, so that the cabbage on the bottom wouldn't burn. Do not stir with a spoon.
7. Remove the cabbage rolls from the pot. Put the oil in the other pan, heat it, add the flour, fry it a little bit (about half minute). Put in the flour some liquid from the pot with cabbage. Mix and put it back to the pot. Mix again. Boil for about 10 minutes.
8. Serving: put some cabbage on the plate, put the cabbage roll on the cabbage and some sour-cream on top :) Or how you want :)

Jó étvágyat! :)