Last updated on March 14th, 2018 at 04:40 am
Traditional Romanian Cabbage Rolls are made with sour cabbage stuffed with pork and beef and little bit of bacon, the best cabbage rolls you will ever have.
Here’s my tried and true cabbage rolls recipe that is a must have for every Christmas. First of all, the big difference between Romanian cabbage rolls and others are that we make them with sour cabbage. You can find sour cabbage at pretty much all grocery stores, here in Calgary, we always find them at Safeway or any Polish store. With sour cabbage you have to be careful because it is pretty salty, so what I usually do is a few hours before actually assembling the rolls, I put the cabbage in a big pot with water, so some of the salt gets out of it.
This is how I learned to make cabbage rolls from my mother and they are my favorite. The other thing that we do with cabbage rolls, is we add some kind of smoked meat. This time I used smoked bacon. The idea of adding smoked meat is to add some smoked flavor. It really makes the cabbage rolls taste great. Now, although, we always make cabbage rolls at every Christmas and Easter, we do make them other times as well. They are so delicious, you can’t stop eating just a couple rolls.
Cabbage rolls are easy to make, it’s just time consuming to make the rolls. That’s why when we make cabbage rolls we make lots. The good thing about cabbage rolls is that you can freeze them.
First of all, chop the onion and saute it with the oil, just enough until the onion is translucent. I also like to add the rice to the onion and cook it together for a minute or so. In a large bowl, add the ground pork, dill, onion, rice, and salt and pepper.
Use your hands to mix all the ingredients together. Make sure you mix it well.
For these cabbage rolls, I used 2 smaller sour cabbages because we couldn’t find a large one. After you’ve soaked the cabbage in water, remove the leaves off the cabbage one by one, and cut each leaf in two, if the leaf is too big. I also cut the core piece off. Place them on a plate so they are ready for you when you start rolling.
Get your bacon ready as well or whatever smoked meat you use, just cut it up in smaller pieces.
With the remaining sour cabbage, usually I leave some leaves on the core and I chop it up and place at the bottom of my big baking dish. Depends on how many cabbage rolls you’re making but you’ll need a fairly big dish, that’s deep enough to hold at least 2 rows of cabbage rolls.
Start rolling the cabbage rolls. I like mine a bit smaller, but I know some people make them really large. I usually use about 1 to 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture in each rolls. Roll them up and line them up in your dish. After the first row add the bacon in between the rolls. Continue until done with meat mixture.
Pour the liter of tomato juice all over the cabbage rolls. If the cabbage rolls are not completely covered, add water. Cover them up with the lid, or aluminum foil and bake in a preheat 375 F degree oven for 2 hours. After two hours, you’ll notice most of the juice has evaporated so you might need to add more water, you don’t necessarily have to fill it up to the top this time. Bake for another 2 hours without the lid on. Your house will smell wonderful.
They are just wonderful, truly one of my favorite dishes ever.
Check out the video to see how to make this version of cabbage rolls in a crockpot or check out the recipe here!
If you guys love this recipe, and most importantly make it yourselves, please let us know. Take a picture and tag it #jocooks on Instagram so we can see it. I always love to see what you guys come up with!
Romanian Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale)
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 large onion chopped
- 1/2 cup long grain rice uncooked, I prefer basmati
- 2 lb ground pork or whatever meat you prefer
- 1/4 cup parsley chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh dill chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 lb sour cabbage leaves
- 15 slices bacon chopped
- 4 cups tomato juice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- Heat the oil in a skillet, add the onions and cook until softened and translucent. Add the rice and cook for another minute.
- In a large bowl, add the ground pork, salt, pepper, parsley, dill and the onion and rice mixture. Be careful with the salt, not too much is needed because the sour cabbage is already salty. Mix well using your clean hands.
- Remove all the cabbage leaves and cut each leaf in half. Romanian cabbage rolls are traditionally smaller than the Polish cabbage rolls, so that's why I recommend cutting each leaf in half, otherwise you can use the entire leave for one roll.
- Fill each leaf with about a couple tbsp of the meat mixture and roll. Repeat with all the remaining meat and cabbage. If you have any cabbage left over, chop it up and spread it over the bottom of a big pot.
- Put all the rolls in the pot, add the chopped bacon in between the cabbage rolls and add the tomato juice over the rolls. Add more water if needed, the juice should cover the cabbage rolls entirely. Cover the pot with aluminum foil or a lid.
- Place in the oven and bake for 2 hours, remove the foil or lid and place back in the oven and cook for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Serve hot with a bit of sour cream on top.
Notes
Nutrition
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Excellent basic recipe. Works well with fresh cabbage, which I prefer. And I prefer a beef and pork combo (I don’t find veal is worth the expense or effort to get it.) All beef works well too.
Used it as a jumping off point to replicate a fusion of my mother’s and my aunts’ finest sarmale cu mamaliga to great success.
I am romanian and the thing u said “we making different by adding bacon or sour cabagge”, is our traditional food, so we do not making different, we making with sour cabagge and bacon or smoked pork ham, they melt on your mouth, everyone love cabagge rolls, sarmale, best food in Romania 😍
This are how my mom made them i did almost the same but i tried some of them in my new instant pot and they were melt in your mouth!
After meeting a lovely couple from Romania and hearing the rave remarks about sarmale I searched and found this recipe. My little town did not have the canned leaves so I blanched a cabbage head. I used my own canned tomato juice, our home raised pork and holy cow it was amazing! I’m wondering if I can make a large batch and freeze some. I would cook them once thawed. Have you tried this? Thank you!
Yes, they freeze great, either before cooking or after. So glad you enjoyed this!
Hi! Just wondering how big the casserole skillet should be? I’m attempting these today!
If you have a big roasting pan you can use that, but the size doesn’t really matter because you can layer them. But yeah, I’d go with a big casserole dish or roasting pan, about 18 inches.
My husband is Romanian and i cooked this sarmale as one of their famous food and he loved it!!! I follow this recipe all the time 🙂
Thanks so much for this recipe! I grew up eating these at my best friends Romanian family’s house and have been craving them for ages. I tried other recipes but for me the missing ingredient was always the fresh dill. I made these and they brought back that wonderful flavor I was missing! We served them with sour cream and it was exactly like being back in the kitchen at my friends house. So delicious! Many thanks!!!
I’m so happy you like this recipe, it’s very dear to my heart. 🙂 I especially love it when non-Romanian people try and love it. 🙂
I have grown up eating cabbage rolls my whole life, but not Romanian style. I have to say that this recipe produces the best cabbage rolls I have ever tasted. The sour cabbage adds an amazing kick.
Hi, I live in Raleigh North Carolina and couldn’t find cabbage rolls. Could I use sauerkraut and get the same taste even though it won’t be rolls? Also, do I use cornmeal to make the mamaliga? I lived in Bucharest for 5 years and miss Romanian food. Multumesc!
You can purchase them online, or call some specialty stores in your city to see if they sell it.
thanks, I just found a polish storm that might sell them!
I’ve made this recipe before and it is my favorite! I was adopted when I was 7 from Romania and I miss the food so much. Thank you for sharing this with us. I am making a batch now as we speak! I usually divide it and freeze some so I can enjoy some whenever I want.
My pleasure, enjoy them!
What is sour cabbage? I always steam the cabbage wit stem removed.
Sour cabbage is fermented cabbage, the same as sauerkraut but a whole cabbage instead of it being chopped.
I was wondering what the best way to reheat these? In the oven? At what temp and for how long? Do you add more liquid if reheating?
We usually just reheat them in the microwave and it depends really on how many you reheat at once. If you reheat about 10 cabbage rolls I usually reheat them for about 6 to 7 minutes. I know you can reheat them in the oven too at 350 and no I wouldn’t add more liquid.
In your description you say Traditional Romanian Cabbage Rolls are made with sour cabbage stuffed with pork and beef and little bit of bacon, the best cabbage rolls you will ever have.” This recipe just says pork. Do you mean you can use either pork or beef?
Yes, absolutely, or you can mix the two. 🙂
As a vegetarian, we use TVP, texturized vegetable protein. It emulates ground meat quite nicely.
I’m a complete beginner when it comes to food, but over here in Romania we also have a “vegetarian” version of this, where we use soy instead of meat. I can’t really say which is better since the taste is a bit different, but they are amazing. There is also a variant where u use vine? (vita de vie, maybe someone can help translate properly) instead of sour cabbage.
Hello! I have a friend who spoke about this dish and I’d like to cook it for her 🙂
She mentioned that her grandmother used to make it with homemade tomato sauce (“everything from scratch”). Have you any recipe for that? Or which one do you buy? Is the tomato sauce supposed to be a bit sweet, spicy or tangy etc.. ? Many thanks!
I don’t use tomato sauce, I just buy tomato juice like V8 or anything like that, don’t make it from scratch but you could.
Ok I see.. My bad I didn’t read it properly, was so set on sauce but maybe my friend said juice as well. Is that the traditional way? Thanks so much and great of you to reply so swiftly!
Honestly, that’s how my mom always made them with tomato juice, so in that sense they’re traditional for me that way. I think maybe tomato sauce might be a bit too thick and you might need to add more water.
Thank so much! I will take your lead on this one 🙂 Will let you know how I get on and how my romanian friend likes it! x
Hello again Jo,
Thank you for the quick response about the cooking/temp time.
I have one more request.
The utube video goes really fast over the procedure for crockpot cabbage rolls. I would like to see the technique for “wrapping” the meat/rice mixture in the cabbage leaf- but in slow motion or demonstrated slower- any idea where I could find that? Thank you so much!!
I usually roll it first then tuck in the ends, that’s all there is to it. I’m sure if you search on youtube, you might find something.
HI Jo,
Could you confirm the baking time? Is it 4 hours @ 375 F?
Thanks
Adriana
LOL Yes, 3 to 4 hours. I know it seems like a long time, but they should be fork tender when they’re done. If you don’t want to keep your oven busy for that long, you can always make them in a crockpot. Check it out here: https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/crockpot-cabbage-rolls/
The rice should be cooked prior,to mixing with the meat correct
No, it’s not cooked, it will cook with the cabbage rolls.