Apparently anyone can make stuffed grape leaves just like the ones at your favorite Greek restaurant. I was actually surprised on how similar mine were to the dolmades of my dreams.
The hardest part of it all? Getting the leaves out of the jar! Everything else was pretty time consuming, but completely worth it.
After you take the leaves out of the jar, you dunk them into a pot of boiling water. Reduce the heat to medium and keep them in there for 10 minutes, until the water starts to boil again. Then drain the water, and fill the pot with cold water. I actually left my leaves in the pot of water overnight and didn’t finish putting everything together until the next afternoon. This entire process ensures that the leaves don’t have any bitter taste. (By the way, it worked! I also definitely recommend the Krinos brand because the veins of the leaves were not very stringy.)
Next up you make the filling. My jar had about 51 leaves in it approximately. Many of the recipes online for dolmades seemed pretty huge and for way more leaves. So I tampered with the recipe and it turned out perfect.
First finely chop half of a medium sized white onion. Throw the pieces into a food processor to make them even smaller. Brown the onions in a bit of olive oil until they start to brown, but do not caramelize them. Put those in a mixing bowl with:
About 1.75 pounds of lean ground beef
1 cup short grain rice (very important to be the tiny rice, not long grain)
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp dried mint
hefty sprinkling of black pepper
2 teaspoons of diluted Better Than Bouillon beef base
the juice of one large lemon (if your lemons are kind of small, add juice from the half of another lemon)
Most people say to knead this mixture with your hands. I’ve learned that when people say to knead, you don’t always have to. Sometimes I am not in the mood to have crazy hands! I just used a big spoon and pressed it all together for about 5 minutes. I think this helped squish the meat even more than if you were using your hands. The filling turned out to be perfect, and it smelled so good because of the mint and lemon juice.
Next was the most time consuming part: leaf hunting. You want to go through all of the leaves and find the biggest ones and use those first, then save smaller ones for last. Take each leaf and cut the thick part of the stem off. You’ll have to do that for just about every leaf, but it’s important because the thickest part might not get soft in the limited amount of time they cook.
After you cut that little part away, you put a spoonful of filling above it and fold up the leaf Chipotle burrito style. There’s an example of that on this page, which is where I learned everything about stuffed grape leaves! (Thanks!)
After an amount of time which seems like forever, you’ll have a ton of large to medium, to tiny stuffed grape leaves. As you can see, they look dull and not shiny. This gets taken care of later!
Take the leaves that were really small or torn and place them in the bottom of a crock pot. Then stack the stuffed grape leaves on top of those. Next take a bunch of little plates and put them in the crock pot to hold everything down. Then fill the crock pot with water, so that the water comes up above the plate.
The use of plates helps trap the steam inside the pot. I ended up having to put bath towels on top of my crock pot as well. I had the pot on low for about 2 hours and checked one of the stuffed grape leaves – it was done! (The rice was soft, and not hard.)
Most recipes say to let the pot cool off for a few hours. I didn’t see the need for that. You can take tongs and take all of the dolmades out. Arrange them on a serving plate. To get them shiny and keep them moist, whisk together a bit of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon. Take a spoon and drizzle the mixture on all of the leaves. This makes them taste even more amazing too.
Now it’s tzatziki sauce time! Take one cucumber and peel it. Cut it lengthwise. Take a spoon and remove all of the seeds. Cut each part into thick slices and place in a colander. Sprinkle kosher salt all over the cucumber and let it sit for about 30 minutes so that the bitterness and moisture drains from the cukes. Rinse them off before using.
In the food processor, sprinkle in some dill weed and dried mint. Add the cucumbers and process them into a smooth mix. Put the cucumber mixture in a bowl and add small amounts of plain yogurt and sour cream until it tastes yummy. You can also put more lemon juice to taste.
Then finally, enjoy eating over 40 delicious dolmades for the rest of the week!
