In addition to filling with meat, this dish is also made with various fillings from vegetable products. Lenten dolma in Armenia is made from legumes such as beans, green peas, green or red lentils, chickpeas, round rice, bulgur. Cereals such as rice and bulgur bind the entire filling together so that it does not fall apart. They can also be replaced with ordinary wheat.
Ingredients
- - beans ½ cup
- - chickpeas ¾ cup
- lentils ½ cup
- - onions 2 pcs
- - garlic 2 cloves
- - purple basil 1/2 bunch
- - parsley 1 bunch
- - cilantro 1 bunch
- - sauerkraut leaves 10 pcs.
- - lemon 1 pc.
- - salt, black pepper
- - red bell pepper
- - tomato paste 3 tablespoons
- - vegetable oil 4 tablespoons (corn, olive)
Preparation
You can use any legumes you want to prepare this Armenian dolma. They must first be washed, then doused with boiling water and left covered for 2-3 hours. Chop the onion very finely and start frying in vegetable oil. At the end of frying the onions, add finely chopped garlic and fry everything together for another 2 minutes. When the beans swell and increase in size, you need to drain the water in which they were soaked into a separate bowl. Mix the beans themselves with fried onions and garlic, add tomato paste to this mixture and stir.
Dolma is a national dish in Armenia and is made with the addition of traditional Armenian herbs such as titron. Add dried Armenian herbs titron and marjoram (oregano) to the minced legumes. We also add chopped cilantro, parsley and basil to the minced beans. You can also add dried regan (oregano or basil) to this dish along with fresh. Mix the bean mixture with herbs again. Then add salt, add paprika, ground black pepper and again mix the minced legumes with herbs and onions.
We take a large saucepan with a thick bottom and put cabbage leaves down, which are not suitable for wrapping dolma in them. We take large leaves of sauerkraut and cut off their thick, fleshy parts so that the minced meat can be wrapped in the leaf. If the cabbage leaf is large, then divide it in half and wrap smaller dolmishes. Place vegetarian legume dolma in a pan tightly together. When the first layer of dolma is laid, then place thickly cut lemon slices on top. Then we lay the second layer of Armenian dolma. How to cook dolma with beans, chickpeas, bulgur and other legumes? Cover the dolmishki with an inverted plate, place a weight (a small jar of water) on the plate and fill it with water in which the beans were soaked for 2 hours. Place it on low heat and cook for 40 minutes.
Pasuts dolma is served cold. This dish is not eaten hot and is classified as an Armenian cold appetizer. This dolma can also be prepared in grape leaves. In this case, it is not necessary to add lemon, because... grape leaves already contain the necessary sourness.
Narek Avagyan, chef of the Moscow restaurant “Cafe Ararat” at the Ararat Park Hyatt hotel, talks about the simple treasures of Armenian cuisine
Georgian cuisine is now very well represented in Moscow. Khachapuri, khinkali - everyone knows. Georgians are very good at presenting their cuisine. There are Georgian restaurant chains. There are Azerbaijani ones - “Lamb”, for example. But there are no Armenians. What is the problem of Armenians - they are not confident in themselves. They are afraid to imagine their kitchen. They think that not everyone will understand it. Here we have a good Italian restaurant not far from Ararat - it belongs to Armenians! They can do an Italian restaurant, but they can’t do an Armenian one. But I’m confident in myself and in the kitchen.
Arkady Novikov came to my restaurant several times. He says: “I can’t understand why Armenians can’t make an Armenian restaurant.” And I tell him: “I can’t understand you - why don’t you make an Armenian restaurant.” He answers me: “I can’t find a good Armenian chef.” It hints like this to me. But I feel good here too. How many times did he come to me and ask for only one dish: for me, he says, kofta - and nothing else. And he asks all the time: tell me how this is done. And I understood: he wants this dish at “Lamb”. Well, I told him how to cook, go do it. He leaves and comes again. They can't do it! He doesn't speak, but I understand.
In Armenia, there must be cheese, herbs, and vegetables on the table. Whether you want to eat or not, everything will certainly be there if you come to visit. If there is a festive table, there will be pickles, various meats, and generally everything in the appetizers. Usually only women eat salads; men are so indifferent to salads. They would like snacks with vodka and hot food. It’s not like we have the cold thing brought first, and then you have to wait for the hot one, no, the hot stuff is brought right away. They don’t understand this with us - to wait, wait, think when the hot food will be brought. And they don’t take anything away: the table must be full. They may already bring dessert, but the appetizers should still be there.
The most festive Armenian dish is dolma. If there is dolma on the table, then nothing else is needed. That is, dolma - and those snacks that should always be on the table. For New Year, for example, everyone is sure to do it. The housewives gather, twist - and there is always such a festive atmosphere!
Armenians have dolma, Azerbaijanis, Turks, and Georgians too. Azerbaijanis make more from lamb, we like it from beef. People often tell me: this dish is not Armenian, someone else invented it. I answer: listen, where does humanity come from? After the flood, everyone came down from Ararat to the Ararat Valley - and everyone was hungry, they cooked from what they found there, and from there everything spread.
It is best to take fresh grape leaves for dolma. And young, green - when the berries are not yet ripe. Then they become tough, cook them as much as you want, it won’t work anyway. We order a hundred kilograms of them right away, as soon as they arrive, we scald them in boiling water to kill bacteria, and immediately freeze them. You can use salted leaves, but they will be a little different: they don’t have the same smell and taste of fresh leaves. If you use salted ones, be sure to soak them overnight. It’s even better this way: don’t turn off the tap so that the water rinses the leaves all night, then the salt will leave them.
I make minced meat from beef and also add butter. Many people add pork, but I don’t do this on principle: we have many guests who don’t eat pork. I also add fat tail fat to make the dolma juicier, but this is not necessary. Then I still grind the scalded tomatoes in the meat grinder and don’t chop the greens and onions either, but I grind them so that all the juice flows out and gets into the minced meat. Minced meat in general should not be thick, not dense, but liquid, that’s why tomatoes too. And another secret: you can add sparkling water to it, for the same thing. I also add dried red basil and paprika to the minced meat. Then add dry rice and stir.
For each grape leaf - 30 grams of minced meat. This is how we do it: we spread the leaves on the table, one person serves the leaf, the second puts the minced meat, the third rolls it, and so three people can roll 500 pieces in half an hour.
Once rolled, you need to cook it immediately. First, you need to place grape leaves on the bottom of the pan so that nothing burns. And then the dolma is collected there - tightly, because it swells (there is rice there), and it is necessary that it does not open up. Some people put it in a circle, some put one layer in rows, and the second layer in perpendicular rows, that is, crosswise. And so on. When everything is in place - a full pan of dolma - you need to pour water: only up to half, because there is juice in the minced meat. If you pour it completely, you will get a long amount, and all the juice will go away, and with it all the deliciousness. You need to put something heavy on top, a plate, for example, so that when everything starts to swell, it doesn’t rise too much in the pan. And cover the top with a lid.
You need to cook from 40 minutes to an hour - depending on the temperature. But in any case, you need to cook after boiling over very, very low heat so that it does not burn and cooks evenly. If you don’t eat everything at once, you don’t need to pour out the broth: the rice will absorb it while the dolma cools and then sits in the refrigerator. And it’s easy to reheat a cold one: add a little water, cover with a lid and heat for 3-4 minutes.
You need to eat dolma with matsun sauce: beat the matsun so that it becomes thinner, and add the garlic. Do you want it sliced or squeezed? For me, using a garlic press is better: it’s unpleasant when large pieces come across.
Armenians also have another dolma (by the way, the correct word in Armenian is “tolma”) - lean, pasuts-dolma. It is made from legumes: red beans, lentils, chickpeas - all this is boiled, then fried with onions. You can also add tomato paste or sauce to the pan. And all this is wrapped in cabbage leaves - pickled, but pre-soaked in water. And then it cooks for two hours - and you can also add tomato paste to the water to make it tastier. It seems to be a Lenten dish, but in fact it is also festive. They prepare a large pan at once, for two or three days - however, usually there is nothing left on the second day. And recently I tried to make pasuts-dolma in grape leaves - it also turned out very well.
A lot of Armenian dishes were invented by the poor. Take harisa, wheat porridge with chicken. There is nothing there except dzavar (this is wheat cereal, easy to buy in Armenian stores), chicken and butter. How did this dish come about? The rich bought the meat and threw away all the bones. The poor made a rich broth from chicken bones (there was, of course, some meat left over).
Then wheat was added to it and boiled for a long time, about eight hours, to bring it to a tender state. Constantly stirring, stirring, stirring; in Armenian “to interfere” is “arel”, therefore arisa. At my house, mom and dad took turns interfering. They cooked it overnight - harisa needs to be eaten in the morning, before 10–11 o'clock: there are a lot of carbohydrates - and it takes a very long time to digest.
At the restaurant I make arisa a little differently, from a whole chicken. I cook it, even overcook it - so much so that it just completely falls apart. Then I take it out, cool it and cut it up: I remove the skin, remove the bones, leaving only the meat. Then I add wheat to the meat, pour in broth - and off we go: cook. Until a homogeneous mass is obtained. We install it in the morning and it’s ready in the evening. At the end, add butter and salt - it looks like just porridge, but when you try it, it’s very tasty.
Tzhvzhik is also a poor man's invention. There is even an Armenian film, “Tzhvzhik” - early sixties, black and white. The poor Armenian has many children, the children want to eat, he doesn’t know what to do. He comes to the market, and they sell meat there. He can’t buy meat, he asks and asks for at least some free meat, but no one gives it. He sees that the heart and liver are given to dogs, he says: why throw it away, it’s better to give it to me. And they throw it at him like a dog. The poor man comes home, fries them - the children are happy. The next day he comes to the market again, asks for offal, and they throw it to him again. They ask: what are you preparing from this? He says: tzhvzhik. Everyone starts laughing. And “tzhvzhik” is the sound when everything is fried, that’s the name. They ask him: how do you cook? He says: I cut the heart thinly, I cut the liver thinly, I cut the onion thinly. And he once gave one rich man a taste of his tzhvzhik - that’s it, after that they stopped giving the poor man free giblets.
Tzhvzhik cooks very quickly - after all, it is sliced very thinly. The liver and heart are fried together with onions in butter (everything eaten cold is best cooked in vegetable oil, and anything eaten hot is best cooked in butter). When everything is ready, you need to add tomatoes, without skins. If the tomatoes are not very good, then you can add tomato sauce. I always add it to make it tastier: not just pasta, but a sauce made from tomatoes, cilantro, basil, paprika, black pepper and salt. The liver, of course, is not easy to slice thinly, but there is a secret: you need to freeze it a little. And it’s also important to remove the film from it.
Tzhvzhik is often made for holidays. They cut the lamb, and while the barbecue is being made, the men gather at the grill, quickly cut the liver with the heart, fry it - and drink it with vodka, right, as we say, on their feet. When they go to their wives' house with barbecue, half the lamb is gone - they've eaten and drunk.
But as they say, the fermented milk soup saved (also called apur) is very good for hangovers. It’s good both cold and hot, you can drink it in cups. The word “saved” is kind of like “wait.” Although I wouldn’t say that it takes a long time to prepare, I don’t understand what there is to especially expect. You can also translate it like this: “now it will be”, “now-now.”
It is made from matsun: you take a liter, add a little flour, an egg and more sour cream, whisk until everything is mixed, then add a liter of water, mix and put on low heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon or spatula. You can’t bring it to a boil, otherwise everything will curdle. And then you add the wheat - it’s better if it’s already half-cooked so that it cooks faster - and again you stir and stir. When the wheat is ready, you have to try it, add cilantro, a lot of cilantro, add salt - and that’s it.
In Armenia, every family has its own unusual recipe for dolma, which is traditionally prepared from meat and grape leaves. Over time, other recipes appeared, so today there is a fairly wide range of this dish. The freshness of food is of great importance, and this is especially true for meat.
How is traditional Armenian dolma prepared?
Let's start with the classic recipe, which is used not only in Armenia, but also in many oriental restaurants around the world. Now you have a great opportunity to prepare this dish at home. The cooking process will take about 90 minutes. For a dietary dish, you can prepare fillet and use it in the filling.
For this recipe you should prepare the following list of products: 1 kg each of grape leaves and minced lamb, 150 g of rice, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. We will serve with sauce, for which you need to take 250 ml of natural yogurt without filler and 3 cloves of garlic.
Step-by-step instruction:
- Cut the peeled onion into small cubes; if desired, you can fry it until golden brown in oil;
- Add it to the minced meat and mix well. Rinse the rice thoroughly in running water until it remains clear and add it to the other ingredients. Mix the filling thoroughly with your hands;
- Add chopped garlic, spices, salt and pepper to it. Remember that Armenian cuisine is savory and spicy, so don’t skimp on seasonings. Add a little cold water so that the final mass is soft and homogeneous;
- Take grape leaves and pour boiling water over them to make them more pliable. Place them on the board so that the convex veins are inside after twisting. If you use pickled leaves, you should first soak them in water;
- Take some minced meat with your hands, place it on the edge of the sheet and wrap it, forming an envelope. Place the dolma in a saucepan and fill it halfway with water. Cover with a plate on top and place a weight, for example, a bottle of water;
- Place the pan on the fire and after 15 minutes. Remove the weight with the plate and cover the pan with a lid. Cook over low heat for 40 minutes. Break one dolma and check the readiness of the rice and meat;
- Let's move on to the sauce, for which pass the garlic through a press and mix it with yogurt. The dish is ready to serve.
How to cook pasus-dolma in Armenian?
The dish turns out to be quite satisfying, since the filling includes beans and different types of cereals. Instead of grape leaves, cabbage is used in this version of dolma. The dish can be served for any meal.
For this recipe for pasus dolma in Armenian, you should: prepare a list of ingredients: 0.5 tbsp. red and white beans, wheat, rice, chickpeas and lentils, as well as a head of cabbage, 55 g of raisins, 5 pcs. prunes, 2.5 tbsp. spoons of tomato paste, a couple of onions, a bunch of parsley, cilantro and mint, salt and 2 tbsp. spoons of vegetable oil.
Step-by-step instruction:
- It is recommended to soak beans and chickpeas separately overnight. In the morning, drain the liquid, rinse and boil these ingredients and other types of cereals separately;
- Cut the peeled onion into small cubes and fry in oil for 6 minutes. Wash dried fruits and cut into small cubes. Finely chop the pre-washed greens;
- Mix beans, cereal, raisins, onions and half of the prepared greens. Add salt and pepper to the filling to taste, and then mix everything well;
- Now let's move on to cabbage. Remove the stalk from the head of cabbage, and then place it in a large saucepan and pour boiling water over it. Add salt and cook for 8 minutes. After time, cool and separate the leaves;
- Using a knife, carefully trim the thick veins from the leaves. Wrap the filling in the form of an envelope in the leaves;
- Take a pan and grease it with oil. Lay out the dolma, add the prunes and the remaining greens. Separately combine tomato paste and 1.5 tbsp. water. Mix well and pour into the pan. Close the lid and cook on low heat for half an hour. After the time has passed, remove from the stove and leave in the refrigerator for a day. Must be eaten cold.
How to cook summer dolma in Armenian?
The dish prepared according to this recipe is similar to cabbage rolls, but it uses grape leaves. Thanks to dried fruits, a pleasant sweetish taste appears. It is recommended to serve with sweet and sour sauce.
Summer Dolma is prepared from such ingredients: 1 kg lamb with fat, 1 tbsp. rice, 225 g of grape leaves, a bunch of cilantro, a couple of onions, 155 g of dried apricots and prunes, tomato juice, suneli hops, pepper and salt.
Step-by-step instruction:
- We start with the leaves, which need to be poured with boiling water, and then soaked in water. Rinse the rice several times in water and pour boiling water over it;
- Wash the peeled onion and cut into small cubes, and then fry in oil until golden. Pass the meat, cleared of films, through a meat grinder. Wash the greens, dry and finely chop. Combine all the prepared ingredients, add spices and mix everything well;
- Take a thick-bottomed pan and place a few grape leaves on the bottom. Wrap the prepared minced meat in the rest and form a dolma. Place it in a cauldron and add chopped dried fruits. Add tomato juice until it reaches the top level of the Armenian cabbage rolls. Place on the stove, cover and simmer for an hour until done.
How to cook vegetable dolma in Armenian?
The most original option, since we will cook not in cabbage and grape leaves, but in vegetables. This is an ideal dish for the summer, when nature pleases with fresh vegetables from the garden. It is also called “traffic light” because it contains vegetables of different colors.
For this recipe you should prepare the following list of products: 145 g melted butter, 2 eggplants, onions and tomatoes, 0.5 g lamb, 100 g fat tail, 2 teaspoons salt, and also ground and hot red pepper.
Step-by-step instruction:
- Grind the peeled onion and meat through a meat grinder, and then grind the mixture with your hands. Place it in a dry frying pan and simmer, stirring occasionally to avoid lumps. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, 70 g of oil and mix well. Cook until the mince is crumbly;
- Take the eggplants, remove the tail, and then use a knife to make indentations and remove the insides. Sprinkle some salt inside and leave for 10 minutes to remove the bitterness. After the time has passed, rinse the vegetables;
- Take care of the pepper, from which you need to cut off the top to form the so-called lid. Remove seeds and veins. Cut off the bottom of the tomatoes and remove the teaspoonful pulp, which is useful for the sauce;
- To prepare dolma, you need to fry the eggplants and peppers in oil on both sides over medium heat until half cooked. Cool them and fill them with filling, which should also be added to the tomatoes. Cover the peppers and tomatoes with a “hat”;
- Take a saucepan with a thick bottom, add oil and chopped tomato pulp. Add the stuffed vegetables and simmer over low heat for 35 minutes. Serve with the sauce in the pan.
Whatever recipe you choose, if you follow all the rules, the dish will turn out incredibly tasty and satisfying. We are sure that both adults and children will enjoy it.
Pasuts tolma(lenten tolma)
There is one obligatory dish that will be on the New Year's table of Armenians. This pasuts tolma(lenten tolma). Such dolma is not inferior in taste and calorie content to meat, and it is customary to eat it cold. Many fast until Christmas, they may be interested in this dish.
For this dish, it is advisable to have a whole head of sauerkraut or salted cabbage, although fresh cabbage can also be used. If you want to strictly follow the recipe, then pickle the head of cabbage in advance (a week in advance), cutting out the stalk from it.
For pasuts tolma you need:
– a head of salted cabbage – up to 2 kg;
– peas – 1 cup;
– beans – 1 cup;
– lentils – 1 cup;
– wheat cereal (achar, dzavar or blgur) – a little less than a glass;
– you can put half a glass of rice;
– 2 tablespoons of tomato or half a glass of lecho (tomatoes with pepper);
– a pod of hot pepper;
– dried basil and mint;
– fresh herbs – cilantro, parsley, dill;
– onions – 3 large onions;
– vegetable oil – half a glass;
– salt, black and red ground pepper;
– pitted prunes – 5 pieces;
– dried apricots – 10 pieces.
Strictly speaking, there is no rice in the traditional recipe, but you can add half a glass - this is a modern version of dolma.
Preparing dolma takes a lot of time.
If the cabbage is too salty or sour, then it needs to be soaked for 3-4 hours in cold water. Then disassemble into leaves, taking larger leaves. If the cabbage is fresh, then the leaves should be placed in a large saucepan and filled with hot water until they become soft and cooled. Cut off the thickening at the base of the cabbage leaves.
Soak the peas and beans separately for 3-4 hours, drain the water, put in separate pans, add water and cook until half cooked. Lentils, cereals and rice cook faster, so they should not be cooked, just rinsed.
Finely chop the onion and fry in a saucepan in vegetable oil until golden brown. Add finely chopped hot pepper there. Add ground red and black pepper, salt to taste. Place basil and mint, half a tomato or lecho in a saucepan, stir and fry for a couple of minutes.
While the contents of the saucepan are frying, wash the dried apricots, chop them finely and place them in the saucepan. Put there: beans, peas, lentils, cereals and rice. Mix everything, close the lid and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
Remove from heat and add finely chopped fresh herbs, mix well, cool - this is the filling.
While the filling is cooling, prepare the filling: dilute the remaining half of the tomato or lecho in a glass of hot water.
Wrap the cooled filling in cabbage leaves, put it in a saucepan, put prunes between the layers and on top, pour in the filling. It is necessary that the water covers the tolma, if there is not enough water, then add hot water. Cover the dolma with a plate, the pan with a lid and cook for 40-50 minutes over low heat until done.
When the tolma has cooled, place it on a dish, garnish with prunes from the pan and finely chopped herbs. This tolma is served cold.
Pasuts tolma is a dish where some variations are possible: the filling can be wrapped in grape leaves. But grape leaves are smaller than cabbage leaves, and therefore, to make the filling easy to wrap in the leaves, boiled beans and peas are minced through a meat grinder before adding to the saucepan.
There is also a completely simplified version with grape leaves: only lentils and rice are used for the filling; beans and peas are not needed. This kind of dolma is also called “deceptive” - if the eater has not seen the cooking process, then he may not immediately realize that there is no meat in the dolma. Boiled lentils look and taste like meat.
Bon appetit!
Armenian dolma is often prepared only from fresh young grape leaves. Although even in their absence, enterprising housewives manage to prepare delicious Armenian dolma for their households. This is because they close the procurement of such leaves for the whole next year ahead of time. You can also do the same and make dolma preparations yourself, because on our website you will find a simple and affordable way to pickle grape leaves for winter.
The step-by-step classic recipe with photos, which is presented below, will tell you how to prepare delicious dolma in Armenian. For the filling we will use lamb and pine nuts, as well as many different spices: these ingredients are very often used in Armenian cuisine. Sour cream will relieve the filling from dryness and make the overall taste much deeper. Did you know that even dolma can be made lean and vegetarian? Instead of meat, a wide variety of ingredients are placed in this dolma, from lentils to mushrooms. Let's start cooking delicious Armenian dolma according to a traditional recipe.
Ingredients
(unsweetened yogurt, 1-2 tbsp.)
Ground black pepper
Cooking steps
Despite the fact that the filling is almost the main flavor component of this dish, the grape leaves have almost equal importance. Therefore, pay attention to the leaves you choose: these should be fresh, bright and young grape leaves. If you do not have the opportunity to purchase such leaves, then take pickled ones, but the lightest ones in your opinion.
Now let's start preparing the filling for the Armenian summer dolma. Lamb is an ideal option for cooking dolma, so buy a fresh piece, rinse it and pass it through a meat grinder. In a deep bowl, mix finely chopped meat with pine nuts, which also need to be very finely crushed. This can be done using a blender or even a regular mortar. Peel the onion and garlic, chop and add to the bowl. Prepare the greens in advance: it can be dill, parsley or basil. Wash and chop the leaves to match all the other ingredients. Don't forget about all the spices and also add them to the minced meat. Sour cream or unsweetened yogurt will make dolma very tender and juicy. Mix all the filling ingredients thoroughly so that they form a homogeneous dense mass.
Let's start forming the rolls. Place a spoonful of the prepared filling on the grape leaf. We wrap the side edges first, and then roll the sheet into a roll, starting from the top.
Make sure that you mold the dolma tightly, otherwise it may lose its shape during the cooking process.
Carefully place the dolma in a deep pan as shown in the photo. You can line the bottom of the pan with unused grape leaves. Fill the dolma with water so that it barely covers all the rolls, add a little vegetable oil, cover them with a flat plate, put pressure on top and cook the dolma over low heat for 2 hours. We serve the finished dish either hot or cold. Real dolma in grape leaves in Armenian is ready.
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