To quickly cut cabbage for making cabbage rolls, you can use the microwave or place the head of cabbage under running water. Both of these options are available and do not require any special skills.

Cabbage for cabbage rolls: how to quickly cut a head of cabbage

If you have a microwave oven at home or in the country, then you can prepare cabbage for cabbage rolls in a few minutes. To do this, you can use a household appliance of any power and capacity. The main thing is that the head of cabbage, placed inside the equipment, rotates freely when turned on.

Use the microwave to quickly cut cabbage for cabbage rolls

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Before starting work, you need to cut off the stalk and make notches along the base.
2. Put the cabbage on a plate or bowl and put it in the microwave for 8-10 minutes, setting the oven to maximum power.
3. After the end of the process, dense leaves will easily separate from the head. If the procedure becomes more complicated, you should re-send the cabbage to the microwave oven.

Thus, within a minimum time, you can disassemble the head of cabbage into individual elements. If the finished semi-finished product turns out to be too tough for cooking cabbage rolls, send the cabbage leaves folded in a stack to the microwave for five minutes. After additional processing, they will become soft and fold easily.

How to cut cabbage for stuffed cabbage without improvised means

If it is not possible to use household appliances, you can use a simple option, which requires only access to running water:

• prepare the head of cabbage by cutting off the stump and cutting the junction of the leaves with the base;
• place the cabbage under running water;
• grope for the junction of the leaf with the stump and slightly separate it from the head, letting water inside;
• loosen the leaf until it separates.

In this case, the water acts as a lubricant, separating the tight connection between the leaves. It will take no more than 2-3 seconds to separate one sheet.

In a home full of different kitchen appliances, cooking becomes a pleasure. If you show your imagination, then some devices can be found not quite standard use. For example, not everyone knows for stuffed cabbage in the microwave. It turns out that this is not at all difficult to do.

Waiting minutes

Before starting to cook cabbage rolls, each housewife first of all goes to the store or to the market. The choice of products must be treated very carefully, because they will mainly affect the result. Among the general list, special attention is paid to cabbage. First, you need to remember two conditions:

1. Do not take a head of cabbage for round cabbage rolls. The leaves in it are powerful and tough. It is better to take one that is slightly flattened and looks like a pill. Such cabbage leaves will be thin and long enough.
2. The head of cabbage should be without damage: mechanical in the form of cracks and diseases in the form of black dots inside.

Now the hostess is faced with the task of preparing him for work. It is necessary to make the leaves become soft and pliable. Few people know how to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls in the microwave.

There is no secret here. This is done as follows:

1. A head of cabbage weighing 2 kilograms must be put into the oven and the door closed.
2. Set the timer for 10 minutes, and it is better to choose the maximum power (900 watts).
3. After the call, take out the product and immediately put it under running cold water.
4. After that, it must be wrung out with your hands. If it is not yet quite soft, then the procedure can be repeated (2-3 minutes).

This is the easiest way to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls in the microwave. Minimum labor costs in a short time.

Slowly and surely

Those who are not used to hoping at random can use another option. There is another way that will teach you how to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls in the microwave. It is, in principle, similar to the previous one. True, there are some clarifications:

1. First, the head of cabbage must be turned upside down and four deep cuts made around it with a sharp knife.
2. Put the cabbage in the oven for 10 minutes.
3. Take out the vegetable and carefully separate a few of the top leaves. You need to remove only those leaves that themselves lag behind.
4. Once again make cuts around the base and send the product to the microwave again, but for 5 minutes, no more. This should be done until the last leaf is removed.
5. Collect the separated foods and put them back in the oven for 4-5 minutes. After that, they will become generally transparent. It will be easy and simple to wrap minced meat in them. Soft thin leaves retain their plasticity, and the filling will never fall out of them.

This option is longer, but reliable.

Hot water effect

But the microwave is not the only option on how to remove the leaves from cabbage for stuffed cabbage. After all, this dish was prepared long before the cunning machine was invented. And the hostesses found another way out of this situation. It is understood that the product softens at elevated temperatures. How to create such conditions? The easiest way is to use boiling water. This was the secret of our grandmothers.

Everything was done like this:

1. First, you need to cut the stump with a sharp knife.
2. At this time, boil water in a large saucepan.
3. Dip the prepared product into it and wait 7-10 minutes.
4. Remove the head of cabbage, place it on a plate and carefully separate the top leaves.
5. Make cuts again, but deeper, and repeat the procedure.

Each time the head of cabbage will become smaller and smaller. At the last stage, the process can be considered complete. Pieces that are too large can be halved and thick stems can be simply cut out. This method of removing leaves from cabbage for stuffed cabbage is good because it does not require re-processing of the leaves. But it also has disadvantages. The hostess has to constantly deal with boiling liquid and hot product, and this is not at all safe.

Cooking a dish

Having mastered the technique of processing cabbage, you can take on the dish itself. How to cook will explain step by step how it can be done.

First of all, you need to collect all the necessary products on the table: a kilogram of meat, 2 heads of fresh cabbage, an onion, a glass of rice, 1 carrot, 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 500 grams of tomato, a bunch of parsley, pepper, salt and any spices.

To make stuffed cabbage, the recipe (step by step) includes the following steps:

1. Pour boiling water over the rice and leave for half an hour.
2. Any of the methods chosen to divide the head of cabbage into leaves.
3. Lightly fry the chopped onion in a skillet. A little later add grated carrots, tomato, salt and pepper. The mixture should boil well.
4. Grind the meat with a hand blender. You can also use a meat grinder, but then it is better to scroll the mass twice.
5. Strain the rice and add to the meat along with the stewed vegetables. Mix the products well. This will be the filling.
6. Put a little minced meat on each cabbage leaf, and then, wrap the edges, squeeze tightly and form a cabbage roll.
7. Place the semi-finished products in a roaster or on a pallet, placing them with a seam downwards. After that, pour the tomato, diluted with water, sprinkle with chopped herbs and put in the oven.

After a couple of hours, tender and fragrant cabbage rolls will be ready.

Simplified version

For those who do not want to waste time and tinker with leaves, there is another way. They can be prepared with fresh cabbage.

Moreover, they turn out to be no worse than usual. For work you will need: 400 grams of minced meat and a head of cabbage of about the same mass, a glass of rice, carrots, an egg, 2 onions and a tablespoon of tomato paste.

The cooking method is not at all complicated:

1. First, the cabbage must be arbitrarily cut with a knife, poured over with hot water and left for 5-7 minutes to remove all the bitterness from it.
2. During this time, boil the rice. The water must be salted.
3. Combine minced meat with half prepared cabbage and rice. Then add one chopped onion, egg and spices. Stir the products.
4. From the resulting mass, mold the cutlets and place them on a tray, previously lined with the remains of cabbage.
5. Fry the remaining onions with carrots and put on top.
6. Pour everything with a glass of water and put in the oven. Everything will be ready in an hour.

Those who do not want to suffer with cutlets can take meat instead of minced meat and simply cut it into small pieces.

Cold treatment

It turns out that elevated temperatures are not the only way you can change the state of a food. The same results can be achieved with the opposite action. This means that cabbage leaves for stuffed cabbage need to be strongly cooled. An ordinary refrigerator can easily cope with this problem.

You just need to put the head of cabbage in the freezer for 10-12 hours in advance, and then take it out and defrost it in natural conditions. Surprisingly, in this case, the cabbage becomes simply unrecognizable: soft, tender and very plastic. You can wrap anything in it. It is very convenient and completely safe. But this method also has its own catch. Cabbage leaves processed in this way will subsequently be unsuitable for other dishes. Only cabbage rolls can be made of them, so you will have to make so much filling to use up the entire head of cabbage. They also cannot be stored. Even in the refrigerator, this product will spoil very quickly.

Technical capabilities

It is not at all necessary to pre-treat cabbage rolls in the microwave. There are many other appliances in the kitchen, which are also always at hand. Take a double boiler, for example.

Everyone knows its ability to accelerate many dishes. This can be used at the preparatory stage as well. The procedure is very similar to the option with boiling water in a saucepan. But everything is done much faster. After all, time is an expensive pleasure, and they do not need to be wasted. The sequence of actions remains the same. You just need to put the head of cabbage in a double boiler for a couple of minutes. After that, get it out and carefully cut off the top leaves. Then the procedure is repeated until a bare stump remains in the hands of the hostess. After that, it remains only to carefully review the prepared product. On some leaves, you can cut off the thickening on the stem. If the veins are too large, then it is better to completely remove them with a sharp knife.

Peel the head of cabbage from unusable leaves - dry, torn, small. With a sharp knife, make cuts in the stump area to a depth of 5-7 cm. Loose it and cut it out.

Place a deep glass dish or bowl on the bottom of the microwave. If juice comes out of the cabbage, it is better if it does not leak onto the oven plate. Set the microwave to 80% power. Place the head of cabbage in a baking dish and bake for 8 minutes.

Remove forks and cool slightly. Disassemble the cabbage into leaves. Cut the hard veins, comparing them to the level of the leaf.

The leaves from the core will not be as well cooked as the top ones. Place them in a mold or bowl and microwave for another 2-3 minutes. Check the cabbage for doneness. The ideal leaf for cabbage rolls should be translucent and greener than raw. It should bend with little effort, but not break. It may take another minute to boil the cabbage in the microwave. Slightly cooled leaves can be used to make stuffed cabbage rolls.

Cabbage rolls are a very tasty and interesting dish that all family members will surely enjoy. The process of cooking cabbage rolls could be called simple if it were not for the preparation of cabbage. Novice housewives sometimes cope with this task only after several attempts, so everyone is interested in how to cook cabbage for cabbage rolls?

Cooking options for cabbage

In order to cook delicious and tender cabbage rolls, you must first of all cope with cabbage. There are several options to remove leaves:

• - boil in water;
• - to freeze;
• - bake in the microwave.

Such cooking methods are very popular, but each of them has its own characteristics and disadvantages. Most often, people are faced with the problem of uneven cooking of cabbage leaves.

You can cook cabbage with and without a head of cabbage, but then you need to insert a fork into the center so that it is more convenient to remove the vegetable from the water. The microwave option is only suitable for small to medium sized cabbage, as too large may simply not fit.

Boiled cabbage

To prepare leaves for stuffed cabbage, you can use one of the oldest and most proven methods that people used many years ago. To do this, you must first prepare:

• - a large saucepan;
• - 4 liters of water;
• - a tablespoon of salt;
• - cabbage.

How to cook cabbage for stuffed cabbage? This question is of interest to many, but the process of separating cabbage leaves is quite simple and for this you should follow these steps:

1. Peel the cabbage, remove the damaged leaves and make several small cuts near the head of cabbage so that the bases of the leaves can be easily separated from the head. After that, you need to insert a knife or fork into the center of the head of cabbage so that the process of removing the vegetable from the water causes as little difficulty as possible.
2. Put a saucepan with water on the fire and bring to a boil, add salt and only then put the cabbage in it.
3. Boil the cabbage for a few minutes. How much to cook cabbage for stuffed cabbage? It will take about 5-10 minutes to cook the top leaves, but inside, they may not be quite the same as needed, so after the first layers are removed, the vegetable should be placed back for another couple of minutes.
4. Leaves from cabbage must be removed until they are of the right size, since too small leaves are not suitable for making stuffed cabbage.
5. After all the leaves are removed, they need to be cooled to make it easier to wrap the filling in them.

This option for cooking cabbage leaves takes a decent amount of time, but they do not stop using it today. If your home has modern appliances such as a microwave, cabbage leaves can be made a little faster and easier.

Cabbage in the microwave

Cooking stuffed cabbage, today, scares off many women with its complexity. But it turns out that the leaves for this tasty and interesting dish can be prepared very quickly and with a minimum of nerves, effort and time.

Before you put the cabbage in the microwave, you should first of all choose the right option. Cabbage should not be too small or very large - it is best to choose a medium-sized vegetable and not round, but a little flattened. Cabbage, which looks a bit like a pill, has rather large leaves that are ideal for making stuffed cabbage. Microwave cabbage for cabbage rolls is prepared in several stages:

1. The cabbage should be peeled, the upper layers unsuitable for making stuffed cabbage and damaged areas should be removed so that there are no black dots in the leaves.
2. Cabbage weighing up to two kilograms is placed on a plate and placed in a microwave oven for 10-13 minutes at 900W.
3. As soon as the microwave turns off, you need to carefully remove the plate of cabbage and cool it with running, cold water.
4. Put the cabbage stump down and carefully disassemble the leaves, expanding them like a rose.
5. When all the leaves have been separated from the stump, turn the cabbage over and separate the leaves with a knife, carefully trimming them.
6. When all the leaves are removed, thick veins-stems must be carefully cut off of them so that the stuffed cabbage rolls turn out to be tender and tasty, and it is easier to roll them.

The advantage of this method of preparing leaves for cabbage rolls is that it takes a rather short amount of time. The leaves are separated very easily and simply, and at the same time, there are practically no damaged and defective leaves.

Freezing

This method of preparing cabbage for stuffed cabbage, at first glance, seems a little unusual, but as it turns out, it is quite effective, although it has its drawbacks. In order to cook cabbage in this way, you must:

1. Prepare the cabbage: remove the top layers that are not suitable for cooking cabbage rolls, remove areas with dark dots and damaged leaves.
2. Place the cabbage in a tight, plastic bag and place it in the freezer overnight.
3. In the morning, you need to get the cabbage and put it to defrost at room temperature.
4. When the cabbage is thawed, it will be very soft, so there will be no problems with the separation of the leaves from the stalk.

This option for preparing leaves for stuffed cabbage takes a very long time and if it is not there, then it is a little problematic. If the preparation of stuffed cabbage is planned for the next day, it can be used successfully, but it should be borne in mind that all the leaves will need to be used immediately.

Each of the methods for preparing cabbage leaves has its own advantages and disadvantages, so each housewife needs to try all these options and choose the one that she likes best. Using these options for cooking cabbage for stuffed cabbage, you can more often enjoy the whole family with their delicate taste and exquisite aroma.