So, if you have prepared yourself while reading my previous post, roll up your sleeves and purchase the following - 1kg of minced meat (pork and beef), one big cup of rice, 2 onions, pickled cabbage (entire), smoked ribs or any pork meat with bones, salt pepper and dried ground pepper. With every step is a short story about some of the ingredients...
1. separate the leaves of cabbage, remove the thick parts in order to fold it easily. Pickled cabbage is a traditional winter salad, or used in such meals. Almost every home makes it on their own. Extremely rich in vitamin C.
 |  2. chop the onions and put them in a large hot pan (oil or pork fat is a must). Fry - cook until it softens and starts to look like glass. Pork fat is preferred since it is natural (even tough the calories say it otherwise, it is made with no preservatives even in industrial conditions)
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3. prepare the smoked meat - if too hard, put it in warm water to soften, cut it into smaller pieces. Smoked meat is made a bit different - we leave it in salt (sometimes with spices) for a few days, then dry it on a draft, then have it smoked for a couple of days. Meat is then left for a month in draft with periodical smoking if necessary. Smoked meat is then cut and goes directly on the table, or sometimes (like in this case) used in other meals. The right picture is a traditional Serbian hors d'oeuvre - smoked beef, pork, sausage, 'duvan cvarci' (there is absolutely no translation for this one - dried and cooked pork fat with meat, cooked until lost all of its fat), kaymak and cheese (milk products), pie and 'proja' (corn bread, traditionally served with sarma as well)
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4. Prepare the meat - put it in together with the onions, and fry until it gets color. Add rice, previously washed with some water. Then continue to cook until it loses all the fluid - water. Add the spices - salt, pepper and groud red pepper. The tradition of using minced meat is Byzantine, and a lot of meals are made with it - unlike Greek mousaka made with eggplant, in Serbia potatoes and zucchini are used to make it. Dried red peppers are usually ground and used as a spice, giving food a specific aroma and colour. After adding it, you must remove the pan from the stove, because it burns really fast.
 |  5. Roll the sarma - this is where your patience and skill are needed. Take one leaf of cabbage, put it on you palm, put one spoon of prepared meat and roll. Every housewife has her own way of rolling sarma so they don't lose shape while being served and to make them all the same size. My mom taught me a specific technique (not displayed in the picture).
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 |  6. Prepare the pot - pork fat and leaves of cabbage on the bottom (usually the smallest or torn while separating). Then you put sarmas together with smoked meat, and cabbage leaves on top. Rolled sarmas are put in a metal pot (if cooked on the stove or in the oven), or clay pot (traditional if made by the open fire or even in the oven). When Clay pots have a come back in Serbian homes in recent years. When you buy one and you want to use it in cooking, you must put cold water in it and put it in a cold oven, then heat it. You practically need to cook it before first use, or it will burst from heat.
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7. Pour water until the pot is full, cover it and cook it slowly... For as many hours as you can - minimum is 2,5 hours, normally around 4. Not to mention again that my mom puts it the oven on 100C and cook it all night - it practically loses all the water, but slowly. Serve it with corn bread - proja (with cheese in the picture). Bon appetit!
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2. chop the onions and put them in a large hot pan (oil or pork fat is a must). Fry - cook until it softens and starts to look like glass. Pork fat is preferred since it is natural (even tough the calories say it otherwise, it is made with no preservatives even in industrial conditions)
5. Roll the sarma - this is where your patience and skill are needed. Take one leaf of cabbage, put it on you palm, put one spoon of prepared meat and roll. Every housewife has her own way of rolling sarma so they don't lose shape while being served and to make them all the same size. My mom taught me a specific technique (not displayed in the picture).
6. Prepare the pot - pork fat and leaves of cabbage on the bottom (usually the smallest or torn while separating). Then you put sarmas together with smoked meat, and cabbage leaves on top. Rolled sarmas are put in a metal pot (if cooked on the stove or in the oven), or clay pot (traditional if made by the open fire or even in the oven). When Clay pots have a come back in Serbian homes in recent years. When you buy one and you want to use it in cooking, you must put cold water in it and put it in a cold oven, then heat it. You practically need to cook it before first use, or it will burst from heat.
