Turkish Recipe : Stuffed Grape Leaves

These are better than the ones in the can or those found in a restaurant. And most of the ingredients can be found right in your pantry.

The only ingredient that might take some time to find our the grape leaves, but if you are in Europe, these will not be that hard to find. A pack of 50 can be found in any Turkish grocery story for about 2,50 euros or you can pick them fresh while in Turkey. My mother-in-law sent me home with a bag of 200.

The term sarma derives from Turkish verb "sarmak," which means to wrap or to roll. It can be prepared with rice and spices (vegetarian) or with rice and ground meat. Both are delicious. To find a recipe with ground meat check out this one. I prefer to make my grape leaves the vegetarian way, because I usually make dolma (stuffed peppers, another interesting recipe to come) the same night.

There are no set ingredients to this recipe, I usually just eyeball and pour in the ingredients and taste it before "stuffing them."

1-2 cups of rice washed

1-2 onions grated

1/2 tomato grated

2 tbs. tomato and/or pepper paste - I usually add lots

parsley chopped finely

salt

mint and other spices

1. Mix well all of the ingredients

2. Boil the grape leaves for 10 minutes to clean off the excess salt. Then cut off the stems and "hang" them to dry around a strainer

3. Put one leaf (the shiny side down) and a little of the rice mixture in the leaf and fold tightly.

 

Put in a pot, until they look like the picture above, I usually line the pot with parsely stems or lettuce. Fill the pot with water about half-full and then cover with a small plate and cook for 20-30 minutes or until the rice is tender.

Feel free to post your pictures or comments on any recipes that you try out!