This is one of my favorites. Did you all know I'm Polish?
I'm going to give you this recipe as if you are standing right next to me and I'm talking to you.
Buy a large head of cabbage and Freeze it. My gg grandmother and down used to boil the head of cabbage until it got soft. Made the whole house stink. Not only that, you would have to drain it and wait till it cooled before you could roll the leaves. I take a short cut. I freeze the cabbage then thaw it, and the cabbage leaves are nice and soft. No difference in my book.
Cut out the core and separate your leaves. I always throw away the first layer of leaves, I think they are yucky.
I'm going to assume you know how to roll a cabbage leaf. If you don't ask someone else...all I can tell you is..put the meat on the big end, roll once, fold the sides over and continue rolling. My mother used to put the meat in and roll the whole thing up and then tuck the ends in on each side. I could never do that, I always poked a hole thru the thing and ended up with a mess.
This is my meat filling...and everyone I know, loves these when I make them. Maybe you will, maybe you wont.
2 pounds of ground chuck, sirloin, whatever you can afford.
Dice an onion into small pieces
Add rice, (I never measure I just pour it in...I guess around a cup or less)
bread crumbs..again, I don't measure, hahahha, maybe about a cup
1 egg
about a half cup of milk
Of course salt and pepper.
Mix it all very very well. Now get rolling, and line them up side by side in the pan, I always have several rows. I make a lot.
After you have them in your pan, fill the pan with Spicy V-8 juice. Cover with Foil and bake at 350 for several hours. You want the flavors to all incorporate and the juice to thicken, the meat to be very tender. I would say about 3 hours.
These are very very good. Happy Eating.
