Stuffed Cabbage Leaves

My wife and I made this recipe over the weekend. However, we scaled it up so we would have 4 pans to freeze for later meals. If you scale up the recipe, I recommend also increasing the amount of tomato sauce. We found that we came up a little short on the sauce distribution.

Ingredients

For the sauce:

- 13.5 fl oz tomato sauce

- 3.4 fl oz vegetable stock

- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

- 2 tbsp sugar

- 1 tsp cinnamon

- 1 pinch salt

- 1 pinch pepper

For the stuffed cabbage rolls:

- 1 cabbage head

- 17.5 oz ground meat

- 2 eggs

- 4.2 oz jasmine rice

- 1 diced onion

- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

- 1 cup parsley, chopped

- 1 pinch salt

- 1 pinch pepper

Directions

1. To prepare the sauce, mix the tomato sauce with the stock, balsamic vinegar, and seasoning. Now spoon the sauce into a casserole dish; the bottom of the dish on the inside should be completely covered in sauce.

2. Next, remove the cabbage stem and boil the entire cabbage in salted water for 10 minutes. Take it out of the water and remove the leaves that are already soft. Keep boiling the cabbage and removing leaves until you have enough for your shells. Refresh the leaves in cold water and leave them to dry. To finish, cut away the stem at each corner.

3. It's now time to make the filling. First, add the ground meat, eggs, jasmine rice, onions, garlic, and parsley in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Mix all the ingredients by carefully kneading them with your hands. Now mold a handful of the mixture into a roll using your hands.

4. Now we come to rolling up those rolls. Place a meat roll in the center of a cabbage leaf, fold in its sides, and roll the leaf from the bottom so that the meat is completely covered. Repeat this process until you've used up all the meat mix and leaves.

5. Place the finished cabbage rolls in the casserole dish, keeping them tightly packed. Then spoon the rest of the sauce on top.

6. Bake the stuffed leaves at 320°F for 45 minutes in a convection oven.