Grape leaves for dolma for the winter. How to prepare grape leaves for dolma for the winter: recipes
Features in the preparation of Asian dolma.
In the countries of Central Asia, in mountainous regions, where a large number of vineyards grow, but there is no Russian cabbage, they found an unusual solution in the preparation of a meat dish - tolma (dolma). In this regard, the analog of the stuffed cabbage is obtained in a smaller size and differs in taste, acquiring a sour and spicy taste due to the grape leaf. Together with minced lamb and rice, Caucasian spices, dolma acquires an unusual taste that has conquered many inhabitants of our planet.
In addition to grapes, some peoples wrap minced meat in quince or fig leaves. Dolma is considered a national dish in Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia, and in each country it is prepared according to a special recipe. The traditional filling in tolma is lamb meat chopped into small pieces along with fat tail fat. Cereals are also added to the meat, most often rice, as well as herbs and oriental spices.
Some chefs prefer to use minced fish instead of lamb, supplementing it with lemon juice, rice, various aromatic herbs and seasonings. Therefore, there are many options for preparing dolma at home, the main thing is to know how harvesting grape leaves for the winter will keep them fresh and fit.
Many housewives prefer to harvest grape greens in various ways: salting, canning or dry freezing. Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Harvesting grape greens for the winter.
The best time to harvest fresh vine leaves is when the vines are flowering. For the preparation of dolma, greens from light grape varieties are more often used, since these leaves have a sour-sweet taste that gives the dish a piquancy. The disadvantages of red grapes are their rigidity and uneven leaf blades. Only young leaves from those vineyards that grow far from passing cars are suitable for cutting.Currently, there are many recipes for keeping greens for a meat dish fresh and juicy for a long period of time:
- Fresh storage;
- Pickling grape greens;
- Conservation;
- salting;
- Dry freeze and so on.
Fresh storage - such a preparation of grape leaves for the winter for dolma implies folding young leaves into rolls, which must be tightly filled in a glass jar. After that, it is necessary to cover the container loosely with a metal lid and put it in the oven to be sterilized for about an hour. In the future, the banks are rolled up and cleaned in a dark, cool place. In winter, such leaves will look absolutely fresh and will not lose their useful and nutritious properties.
Marinating and salting grape leaves.
For almost all methods of harvesting grape greens, the main requirement is the integrity of the leaf plates and their cleanliness.
When marinating, the leaves, well washed under running water, are tightly placed in a large metal pan, filled to the top with cold water and put on a large fire until boiling. Further, it is recommended to follow a number of rules to keep the leaves tender and juicy:
- - After complete cooling, grape greens are stacked in piles of 5 leaves, each pile is rolled into tight rolls;
- - For the marinade, you need boiling water with a volume of about one and a half liters, it is necessary to throw large table salt into it - 2 tablespoons full with a slide, as well as allspice peas;
- - Put the resulting rolls as tightly as possible into glass sterilized jars and pour over the still hot marinade.
If there is not enough brine, it is allowed to add water to the top of the jar and leave to cool for several hours. After complete cooling, it is recommended to close the container with a plastic or rubber lid. You can store pickled leaves in the refrigerator or in a dark, cool place.
One of the simplest and most economical recipes for harvesting grape leaves for the winter is salting. To do this, you first need to prepare a 10% saline solution. Prepared cold brine is poured over well-washed grape leaves, tightly packed in a glass container. They should only be stored in the refrigerator, and before preparing dolma, the leaves should be soaked in water for at least a couple of hours to get rid of excess salt.
Preservation of grape greens.
The advantage of this harvesting method is the preservation of all the useful properties of grapes, all its vitamins and minerals needed in winter. This recipe requires skill from the hostess:
- - Young even leaves are washed under a large stream of running water, laid out in piles of 20 pieces and rolled into rolls. They can be secured with threads or thin wooden skewers - toothpicks.
- - In turn, lower them into boiling water, holding in boiling water for a few seconds, then immediately lowering them into cold water.
- - Place the cooled leaf rolls tightly in half-liter glass jars and pour in a saline solution prepared in the ratio of 1.5 tablespoons of coarse salt per liter of water.
- - Close the jars with rubber lids and leave to ferment for a few days.
- - After three days, add 1 teaspoon of 9% apple cider vinegar to each container and add the brine to the top of the jar.
- - Next, you need to send the jars to the oven for sterilization for 20 - 30 minutes, after which they can be rolled up and put away in a dark, cool place.
Such harvesting of grape leaves for the winter in a bottle is the most common option among the inhabitants of Central Asia and the peoples of the Caucasus.
Freezing grape greens
Before freezing young leaves, they should be washed well and completely dried. Put the dried leaves on top of each other by 15 - 20 pieces and roll up into rolls, place in a tight plastic bag and place in the freezer. The disadvantage of this method is the further fragility of the leaves, so after thawing, they must be handled very carefully so as not to damage.
Harvesting grape leaves for the winter in a dry way implies some difficulties. Experts recommend defrosting grape rolls from leaves at room temperature in a natural way. If you need to defrost grape greens in a short time, you can carefully place each roll in cold water, and when they thaw, in warm water.
Thus, with proper harvesting of grape leaves, you can enjoy a wonderful oriental meat dish all year round.
The leaves of white grape varieties are plucked from May to June. Choose smooth specimens that are soft to the touch, and also have small veins. It is forbidden to break:
- leaves of girlish or ornamental grapes - they are considered wild varieties unsuitable for food;
- leaves that are affected by fungus and mold, as well as instances where pests are located;
- leaves painted in strange colors: yellowish, whitish or cream;
- leaves that began to darken on one side from sunburn;
- leaves growing on a vine near the roadway.
Do not collect old leaves, as they contain harmful substances. Experienced gardeners in this case recommend picking the 5th, 6th and 7th copies, counting from the top of the vine. It is desirable that they all be the same size.
How to save grape leaves for the winter?
If desired, you can simply freeze the leaves. To do this, they must be rolled up and put in a plastic bag. Then you can put everything in the freezer. When you want to cook dolma, defrost such leaves first in cold water, and then do everything according to the recipe.
Be sure to sort out the plucked leaves to get rid of suspicious specimens. Rinse each of them with tap water and cut off the cuttings. Now choose any of the ways to harvest leaves for the winter:
- Fresh storage. Twist the leaves into rolls and 8-10 pcs. place in glass jars. Sterilize them in the oven for about 30 minutes. Then put the containers in a dark, cool place.
- Pickling. Prepare a special brine on the stove: 2 tbsp. l. salt per 1 liter of water. Pour the marinade over the leaf rolls in the jars. Leave the last overnight, and in the morning close the lids and put in the refrigerator.
- Canning. Gather 20 leaves into a tube. Dip them for 3 seconds in boiling water, and then in cold water. Arrange the leaves in jars. Pour everything with cold brine - 45 g of salt per 1 liter of water. After 2-3 days, add 1 tsp there. vinegar and roll up the jars.
- Salting. Prepare a 10% salt solution. Take a container of 1.5 liters and pour cold brine into it. Store grape leaves where it is cool. Soak them in water for 2 hours before use.
In the cuisine of almost all countries of the world, there are dishes for the preparation of which minced meat is wrapped in leaves. Such envelopes are then boiled. The shell for such dishes is most often used cabbage, rhubarb or grape leaves. In Russia, a dish of minced meat wrapped in a cabbage leaf is called cabbage rolls.
In the southern regions, where grapes grow near every house, the young leaves of this plant are used to make dolma. It is so delicious that you want to serve such a dish at the table at any time of the year. Which leaves are better to use, how to prepare them in order to try it in the winter, how to cook this exotic dish for us, we will consider in this article.
The preparation of any dish begins with the choice of products. The main ingredient in dolma is grape leaves. I won’t talk about the fact that the leaves should be young, healthy and bright green, this is already clear. It is better to collect them from bushes of white varieties. In the future, these leaves will give the dish a unique taste and unforgettable aroma.
The leaves of dark grape varieties are less suitable for cooking - they are more rigid and rugged.
The first leaves begin to be collected from a flowering bush, but before the start of processing from pests and diseases. The next time the leaves can be collected at the end of the waiting period after spraying throughout the summer.
The optimal sheet size is about the size of the palm of your hand. Smaller ones are difficult to wrap stuffing in, and larger ones can be harsh.
The leaves are collected. We will use some of them to prepare dolma, and we will prepare most of them for future use.
The collected leaves must be washed and dried. You can wipe each sheet on both sides with a clean, dry cloth. It is useful to dry the raw material a little, then the leaves will be less fragile, and it will be easier to process them. It is better to leave the petioles for conservation, for them the leaves will be taken out of the jars.
To keep the leaves fresh you need:
- Wash the container well. Pour one teaspoon of baking soda and table salt into the bottle, add water and shake the bottle for several minutes. The solution is poured out and the container is rinsed with clean water, dried.
- Leaves collected in a pack of 3-6 pieces are rolled into a tube so that it crawls into the bottleneck and is fixed with a thread. A thin stick will help to lay the tubes more tightly. Only the leaves should be in the container and nothing more.
- Air is squeezed out of a plastic bottle and tightly closed with a lid.
- Stored at room conditions or in a cellar at positive temperatures for up to two years.
- Opening, cut the bottle, the leaves are taken out and poured with cold water. A yellowish coating is not a sign of spoilage. The leaves need to be straightened, rinsed with water, stuffed with minced meat and boiled.
The procedure for preparing pickled grape leaves:
- Selected jars need to be washed and disinfected.
- Dried leaves, in a pack of 10-18 pieces in the form of tubes, are tightly placed in jars.
- Prepared jars are poured with boiling water, kept for about 10 minutes. The water is drained and poured with boiling water again.
- Prepare the marinade: dissolve 1 tbsp in 1 liter of water. l salt and sugar, bring to a boil, after 3 minutes add 2 tablespoons of 9% vinegar, stop boiling.
- Leaves are poured with this marinade and hermetically sealed.
- You can store at room temperature.
The easiest way to freeze grape leaves. A stack of leaves of 10-15 pieces is rolled up. In this case, it is better to cut off the petioles - they are not needed. Rolls are wrapped in cling film or laid out in bags. You can use plastic containers. The product is frozen. If you are going to cook dolma, the leaves are thawed in heat. The thawed ones are scalded with boiling water - this will help preserve the taste, aroma and beneficial properties.
Dry salting of leaves
Clean and dried leaves are put in a prepared jar. Every 10 leaves, sprinkle with a little salt and pack tightly. Filled jars are sterilized for 10 - 15 minutes and rolled up. This preparation preserves the taste and aroma of fresh leaves.
The scalded leaves are rolled into rolls, the jars are prepared, we collect a bouquet of spices. At the bottom of a scalded half-liter jar, pour 1 tsp. salt, the same amount of mustard powder and a few peas of allspice. On all these flavors, we tightly install rolls of leaves. Fill jars with boiling water and roll up with a metal lid. The resulting canned food is kept warm.
When you need to prepare leaves in large quantities, use a large container - barrels. Washed leaves, placed in barrels, are poured with a saturated salt solution. A lid is placed on top and a load is placed. During storage, you need to constantly monitor the level of brine, if necessary, add liquid. To prepare dolma, the leaves are taken out of the brine, washed, scalded with boiling water and the petioles are cut off.
Now let's move on to the main thing, for which grape leaves are salted, pickled or frozen. We will tell you how to cook dolma.
Without going into details, everything is prepared very simply - approximately a teaspoon of minced meat is wrapped in a grape leaf, the resulting envelopes are tightly placed in a cauldron and boiled over low heat until tender.
This is a very general technology. Each national cuisine has its own special ingredients and culinary tricks. The question raised by the characters in the film “Mimino”, where dolma is better prepared in Georgia or Armenia, did not receive an answer - everyone remained unconvinced.
Apart from grape leaves, another important ingredient is patience. The eastern analogue of Russian cabbage rolls has microscopic dimensions, which means that several dozen will need to be screwed up.
Minced meat in the East is prepared from fragrant lamb or juicy beef. A lot of greens and onions are added to minced meat.
They love to cook dolma in Romania and Moldova. In these countries, this dish is put both on the everyday table and on the festive table. In summer, grape cabbage rolls are prepared from fresh leaves, dolma for the New Year or Christmas table is wrapped in canned leaves.
There are many recipes for minced meat - rice with vegetables, rice with meat. Every home has its own family recipe.
For cooking you will need:
- meat with a small amount of fat (lamb or beef) - 500 g;
- grape leaves - 100-120 pcs;
- round-grain rice - 1 cup;
- water - 1 glass;
- turnip - 3 large heads;
- carrots - 2 pcs;
- sunflower oil or butter - 5-6 tbsp. l;
- greens (dill, parsley, cilantro, basil) - a large bunch;
- salt - to taste;
- black freshly ground pepper - 1 tsp.
Cooking sequence
First, select the leaves. They should be about the size of a palm, the edge should be as smooth as possible, with a minimum number of teeth. Each leaf must be examined on both sides - to make sure that there are no traces of diseases and pest cocoons. The selected leaves are soaked for 30-40 minutes in cold water.
The rice is washed several times to make the water clear. Prepared cereals are cooked until half cooked with a slight boil. When all the liquid is absorbed into the rice, the heat is removed and the grits are left to cook under the lid.
Finely chop the onion and fry until golden brown.
Regarding carrots, everyone decides for himself. Some add carrots to minced meat, others are categorically against such an ingredient. In our recipe, we will add - the taste will turn out to be more saturated. It is better to grate carrots on a fine grater and fry with onions. When not using carrots, you can use more onions.
Fry onions and carrots together for ten minutes. During this time, the vegetables become soft and absorb almost all the oil. The finished mixture is removed from the heat and allowed to cool slightly.
For minced meat, the meat is passed through a meat grinder. You can use one type of meat - lamb or beef. Or you can use a mixture of them. The disadvantages of minced lamb include a high pour point of fat and a specific smell that not everyone likes.
Rice, minced meat, vegetable fry are mixed. Salt, spices, finely chopped greens - dill, parsley, cilantro, basil are added to the mixture. Mince is ready.
By adding crushed ice to minced meat, you can increase the amount of juice in the finished dish.
The filling should be left for a while, all the flavors should come into interaction, the salt should dissolve.
While the stuffing is mentally preparing to become a filling, we prepare the shell. Wash the soaked leaves and remove the petioles from them. In packs of 15-20 pieces, we send them to boiling water for 1-2 minutes. As soon as the color changes from bright green to olive, remove the leaves from hot water and cool in cold. The water in which the leaves were steamed is used to prepare the filling.
The leaves are laid out on the surface of the table with the smooth side down. Spread about a teaspoon of filling on the ribbed wrong side. There are a lot of options for wrapping a sheet.
- Some place the minced meat in the middle of the sheet and alternately fold the edges of the leaves around the filling.
- Another way - minced meat is placed in the middle of the sheet, the edges are folded to the middle, and the resulting strip is folded into a tube.
By choosing the most successful way to create envelopes, you can prepare almost a hundred small cabbage rolls in 15-20 minutes.
It is better to cook dolma in a thick-walled saucepan or in a cauldron. A tablespoon of melted butter is poured at the bottom - it will give the dish a unique flavor. Lay a layer of grape cabbage rolls. Each layer is poured with oil - so they stick together less. We lay out all the prepared envelopes. Top with water, in which the leaves were steamed with the addition of salt.
Pour in just enough liquid so that the dolma is lightly covered. During cooking, the envelopes will decrease in volume and will be completely covered with liquid.
It is useful to put a flat plate on top, which will help the dolma stay in the gravy, and the liquid will evaporate less.
With a low boil, this work of culinary art languishes for about an hour. During this time, almost all the liquid will evaporate or be absorbed into the filling. Transferring the finished dish to a serving plate, a little concentrated sauce will remain at the bottom.
Hot dolma envelopes, stacked on a large dish, are served on the table without gravy.
The divine taste of dolma is emphasized: sour cream, cheese and tomatoes.
Dolma from grape leaves: video
Cook with pleasure and eat with gusto!
Dolma is one of the most popular dishes of the peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, thanks to its delicious original taste and at the same time quite simple preparation, it also occupies a worthy place in our kitchen. The principle of this dish is similar to our cabbage rolls, but grape leaves are taken as the basis instead of cabbage, and there are also some differences in the selection of spices, the preparation and serving itself.
The ideal option for dolma, of course, are fresh young grape leaves, the size of a palm. But the period of their youth is limited and therefore the leaves are plucked and harvested for future use at the beginning of summer in order to use them all year round to prepare your favorite dish.
There are many ways to do this. We will talk about them in detail below in our article.
Harvesting grape leaves for the winter for dolma
Leaves for dolma can be either pickled or kept fresh. To do this, thoroughly wash the freshly torn sheets, lay them out on a clean towel and let them dry thoroughly. Not a drop of moisture should remain on them, this is very important for perfect preservation. Then we stack the leaves on top of each other in a pile of up to ten pieces and turn them into a tight roll. Next, wrap the roll with cling film and put it in the freezer for storage.
If the volumes of your freezer do not allow you to make large-scale preparations, then the rolled leaves can be placed in glass jars very tightly, rolled up with lids and sterilized in the oven for twenty minutes.
Some experienced housewives use another simple and very effective way to store grape leaves. Prepared dense rolls are placed in plastic half-liter bottles. Each will include approximately five bundles of ten sheets. Then squeeze the container to remove air as much as possible and screw it on with a cork. Thus, the leaves remain fresh for a long time. This is possible, of course, provided that their surface is sufficiently well dried from moisture residues, otherwise they may become moldy.
How to pickle grape leaves for dolma?
Grape leaves for dolma can also be pickled. To do this, we thoroughly wash the fresh young sheets, put them in a deep bowl, pour hot water over it and immediately drain it. Slightly softened by blanching, we assemble the leaves in several pieces and fold them into rolls or envelopes. Then we put the bundles tightly in a prepared clean sterile jar and pour hot marinade. To prepare it, heat water to a boil, add three or four peas of allspice, half a teaspoon of mustard powder and a teaspoon of salt. This is a calculation for one liter jar of grape leaves. Be sure to make sure that the brine fills all the voids between the leaves in the jar. Then we twist the containers with boiled sterile lids and determine for storage in the pantry to other blanks.
How to salt and store grape leaves for dolma?
Grape leaves are perfectly stored in a simple saline solution. For such a preparation, we cut off young grape leaves together with the cuttings, wash them well, put ten things together and tie them with a clean thread. We put the bundles in a clean jar and fill them with a simple saline solution. To prepare it, we dissolve in cold water such an amount of non-iodized salt that a raw egg floats on the surface. The leaves must be completely covered with salty liquid, so during storage it is necessary to add it as it is absorbed by the leaves and the level of brine decreases. Jars with such a blank are covered with nylon lids and determined for storage in a cool place.
Traditionally, dolma is prepared with grape leaves. Unlike similar cabbage rolls, the ingredients for which can be found at any time of the year, it becomes problematic to cook dolma in winter and spring. If cabbage is sold in stores all year round, then grape leaves can only be found in summer. To cook dolma, you need to harvest grape leaves for the winter. There are several options for harvesting grape leaves for the winter.
To prepare foliage for the winter, you first need to decide on the timing. For dolma, young leaves are suitable, which begin to appear before the flowering of the vine. And given that the vine grows continuously throughout the growing season, the collection of leaves begins in late spring and ends in autumn.
For cooking, only the foliage of white grape varieties is used. Such leaves are juicy and tender, perfect for dolma. In red varieties, the leaves are dry and sinewy. The minced meat in them will be dry, and the leaves themselves will be tough after cooking.
Selection and preparation of grape leaves
For preparations, grape leaves are used, which grows far from the roads. Leaves for dolma should be juicy and young, light emerald hue. They are easy to distinguish from the old ones. In addition, they must be free from damage, insect marks, stains or plaque. Leaves are chosen healthy and elastic. If the plants have recently been treated with chemical agents, then you should refrain from collecting foliage for several weeks.
Before harvesting foliage, it must first be prepared. The cut leaves are placed in a deep container and poured with cool tap water. Then each sheet is thoroughly washed and re-examined. After everything is washed, they are laid out in a thin layer in the shade and dried. It is not necessary to dry strongly, the main thing is that only the water dries up, and they are not wet.
Ways to harvest grape greens at home
There are several ways in which you can prepare grape leaves for the winter. Each method has pros and cons. To choose the only one that is ideal for every housewife, it will turn out only if you try all the ways of harvesting green grapes for preparing this Armenian dish.
Freeze
The easiest way to prepare grape greens for cooking dolma is to freeze it in the freezer. Before freezing the greens in the freezer, they are washed and dried. The main thing is that the leaves are dry, otherwise the water will freeze on the leaves, and they will not be as tasty. Greens are stacked in piles of 15-20 pieces and put in a plastic bag. Then put in the freezer.
The main disadvantage of this method is the difficulty in defrosting and using greens for cooking. Frozen leaves are very fragile and tear with any wrong movement.
Pickling
Grape greens can also be pickled for the winter. First you need to prepare the marinade. For him you will need:
- 1 liter of water;
- spices (cloves, peppercorns);
- lavrushka;
- 1 st. l. regular salt and sugar;
- 1-2 tbsp. l. acetic acid.
First, the jars are sterilized. Then spices and lavrushka are laid on the bottom, grape leaves are laid out. Pour boiling water over and after 3-4 minutes the water is poured into a container. Then this water is put on fire and brought to a boil. Add salt, sugar. After the salt and sugar have dissolved, add vinegar and immediately pour the marinade over the jars. Close jars with lids. This method will keep the leaves intact. Spices use any. They will add aroma to the leaves and a pleasant spicy aftertaste. This should be taken into account, because such a dish is not for everyone, and not everyone will like it.
You can close grape greens in glass jars. The process of preparing salting in jars is as follows:
- Twist the leaves into tubes (no more than 10 sheets in one tube).
- Sterilize jars.
- Boil water.
- Put the tubes in a jar and fill with water, drain the water after 10-12 minutes.
- Then pour boiling water back into the jars.
- Drain the water again, add salt and boil.
- Pour the brine over the leaves and close the jars with a lid.
Wait for the jars to cool and put them in the refrigerator.
dry canning
Preserving grape leaves for dolma for the winter using the dry method is quite simple. Leaves are folded into envelopes. You need to choose greens of the same size, then it will evenly fold into a jar. Each envelope contains no more than 10 pieces.
For this recipe, you do not need to use spices, salt and even water. Full jars are covered with lids, wrapped in a warm towel and left in a cool dark place for a day. After 24 hours, you need to get the jar. If the lid is a little swollen, then it's okay, the leaves have not disappeared. It is necessary to redo the workpiece if the lid is swollen strongly. In such a simple way, grape leaves are prepared for the winter to prepare juicy Armenian dolma.
Preservation by dry curing
Another way to make preparations of green grapes for the winter is with the help of dry salting. There are many recipes for greens, but this one is one of the simplest. It's easier to just freeze greens in the freezer.
Grape greens are washed under running water and dried for several hours in a cool room.
It is important to ensure that when laying out the foliage in jars, it is completely dry. Banks for salting are sterilized.
Leaves are folded into tubes or envelopes. The main thing is that they are not too thick. Then the blanks are stacked in jars in layers. When the first layer is at the bottom, it is covered with salt. Then spread the second layer and sprinkle with salt again. So you need to do until the bank is full. After that, close the blanks with a lid and put them in a cool room.
Storage
As a rule, it is most convenient to store jars of grape preparations for the winter in a refrigerator or cellar. After the containers with greens have cooled, they are removed to the lower shelves of the refrigerator or lowered into the basement. The choice of this or that place is not fundamental, the main thing is that they be stored in a cool room where bright sunlight will not fall. You need to store blanks for no more than one year. If they stand longer, they lose all their taste, and dolma based on such greens turns out to be tasteless.
The least stored blanks that are in the freezer. Their shelf life is only six months. If they lie longer, then they are safely thrown away. They are no longer suitable for cooking. When defrosted, they are watery and slimy.
Of course, even if you observe the ideal storage conditions for grape preparations, Armenian dolma based on them is not as tasty and juicy as fresh ones. In this case, cabbage leaves will be the best option. After all, cabbage rolls and dolma are not much different. And dolma is better to feast on in the warm season, when grape leaves are plucked directly from the vine. Many housewives note that the leaves harvested for the winter become hard and rough, no matter how they are pickled.
