Greek Comfort Food: Cabbage Roll Pie with Lemon Sauce (Lahanodolmades Made Easy!)

Vegetarian Version: https://www.dimitrasdishes.com/greek-stuffed-cabbage-rolls-vegetarian/

Print this recipe here: https://www.dimitrasdishes.com/greek-lemony-cabbage-roll-pie-lahanodolmades-bake/

Ingredients

2 cabbages, cores removed
2 pounds ground beef
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cup Arborio rice (or your favorite rice)
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
Freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
1 teaspoon dried dill
Olive oil, as needed
Juice of 2 lemons (1 for filling, 1 for baking liquid)
1 cup water
For the Avgolemono Sauce:
4 cups chicken stock
Juice of 1–2 lemons (about 1/4–1/2 cup, adjust to taste)
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Bring a large pot (or two) of salted water to a boil. Add the cored cabbages, core side down, and boil for 15 minutes. Flip and boil an additional 15 minutes, or until the leaves release easily. Drain in a colander and set aside.

To make the filling, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and cook until softened. Add the ground beef, season with salt and pepper, and cook until no longer pink. Stir in the rice, 1 teaspoon salt, juice of 1 lemon, and 1 cup water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cover and simmer for 6–8 minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and stir in the parsley and dill. The rice will be partially cooked.

Lightly grease a 9×13-inch baking dish or 15-inch round pan with olive oil. Line the bottom with cabbage leaves. Add the filling in an even layer, then cover the top with more cabbage leaves. Drizzle with olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, and add 1 cup of water. Invert a heatproof plate over the pie to hold it down during baking. Cover the pan tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour. Remove foil and plate, and bake uncovered for another 30 minutes until golden.

Carefully remove the plate and let the pie rest for 10 minutes before slicing into portions.

To make the avgolemono sauce: In a mixing bowl or pitcher, whisk together the egg yolks, cornstarch, and lemon juice until smooth. In a saucepan, bring the chicken stock to a simmer. Slowly ladle some hot stock into the egg mixture while whisking constantly to temper it. Pour the tempered egg mixture back into the pot and cook over low heat, stirring, until thickened. Do not boil. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce over the cabbage roll pie before serving, or serve it on the side.

Notes
• You can prepare the cabbage leaves and filling a day ahead to save time.
• If using green or Savoy cabbage, both work beautifully in this dish.
• The avgolemono sauce can be made up to a day in advance and gently reheated.

Music Used:
Greek Sun Time (With Intro)
ITEM ID: 66582698
By: tonyanthony

Its All Greek
ITEM ID: 84456733
By: LowNotes

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Hi everyoneas to another episode of Dimitra’s Dishes. Today we’re going to be turning one of the most comforting and delicious Greek dishes, Laano Dol Madas, into a pie. This is basically the pie version of Greek cabbage rolls. I’m going to be serving them with a delicious lemony sauce on top. You can leave it on the side. It’s however you want to do it. This does take a tiny bit of effort cuz we have to boil the cabbage, but it’s going to be totally worth it. And you don’t have to roll up each and every individual roll. So that saves a lot of time and it’s going to be so good. Let’s get started. We’re going to begin with two cabbages. I just have green cabbages here. And I’ll carefully take the stem out all the way down to the core using a smaller knife. Just a cing knife or any kind of small knife that you have will be safer than a large knife like a chef’s knife or something like that. Once those are out, make sure that simultaneously you have a pot, either one pot or two pots, like I’m using, one pot for each cabbage of water that’s coming to a boil. Season it with a good amount of salt. And then the cabbage is going to go inside the water core side down. And we’ll cook it for 15 minutes on one side. Flip it over. Cook it for about 15 minutes on the other side, too. Halfway through, you’ll notice that the cabbage leaves are separating easily. Just take them out. Once they begin to separate and soften and put them in a strainer so that way the water can drain and at the same time you can make the filling. So the filling is really easy to make. Usually I don’t cook it when I make the cabbage rolls because it boils in the stock but since this is going into the oven the rice won’t be fully cooked if we don’t do this step first. So finally chop an onion and add it to a skillet with about 1/4 of a cup of olive oil. Let it cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until it’s nice and soft. Then we’re going to add 2 lbs of ground beef. I do have a vegetarian version on the blog. And you can leave the beef out and make this completely vegetarian. You can check the link out down below. For now, we’re doing the ground beef. That’s going to go in and I’ll season it with salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Cook it over mediumigh heat until it’s no longer pink. Then we’ll add one cup of our boreo rice. That’s 200 g. If you want to rinse the rice first, you can do that. Just rinse it really well under cold water. I’m just putting it in like this with a teaspoon of salt, a cup of water, and the juice of a lemon. Mix everything all together and bring it to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and let this simmer for about 8 minutes. The rice is just going to be partially cooked, but most of that liquid will have evaporated. Then just turn the heat off and add lots of herbs. I finally chopped some fresh dill and lots of fresh parsley. This is going to go in while the heat is off. Mix everything all together. And at this point, you can give the filling a taste. And if it needs more seasoning, you could add it. We can take the filling off of the heat so it can cool a little bit. And as soon as the filling and the cabbage leaves are easy to handle, we’ll assemble the cabbage roll pie together. So, I’m using this round baking dish over here, but you can use a 9 by13 inch rectangular baking dish for this or a 12-in round skillet. Either of those will do. Lightly grease the pan with some olive oil. And then we’re going to layer the cabbage leaves to cover the inside of the pan. Make sure that they’re overlapping so that way the filling stays put. Now, we’ll top it with that meat filling, the meat and rice filling. If you have any small pieces of cabbage left over, you can chop them up and add it into the filling. Cover the filling with another layer of the cabbage leaves. Make sure everything is tucked in really well. And then we’re just going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil over this. Two cups of water and the juice of another lemon. I like to weigh this down with a plate and then cover the pan with some foil. The oven is preheated to 350° F. This is going to bake for an hour. Remove the foil and then let it bake for another 35 minutes. Take it out of the oven and carefully remove the plate. Let it sit at room temperature while we prepare the agua lemon lemony sauce. So in my saucepan over here, I have four cups of chicken stock or chicken broth. You can use either of the two. I have a little picture over here that I’m adding three egg yolks to with two tablespoons of cornstarch and the juice of three lemons. I like it very lemony, so I’m doing three lemons, but you can do two lemons if you don’t like it as lemony. And if you are not sure, start with two lemons, and if you want more, you can add more later on. Whisk that all together until it’s nice and smooth. As soon as the chicken stock comes to a boil, carefully pour it over the egg mixture and whisk it all together. Transfer everything back into the pot and cook this for about 5 minutes over the heat until it comes to a boil and it begins to thicken a little bit. Next, we’re just going to slice our pie into serving slices. And you can slice this as big or as small as you like. Carefully pour all of that avo sauce on top and let it sit for about 15 minutes so the flavors can absorb and it’s ready to serve. Just take a look at it. It’s golden on top, lemony and delicious in the center. All the flavors of of lano doles that we all love. I know this is one of my favorite comfort foods. Every time I visit my mom in New York, she has this ready for me in the roll version. It’s so good. And as a pie version, it’s just as delicious. Like I said, you could leave the lemony sauce on the side. If you want to have all that flavor permeate through the filling and everything, then pour it on top just the way I did and then just serve it family style. If you want to make this vegetarian, I do have a vegetarian filling on the blog. You could just do everything I did and just use the the ingredients that are on that. But you do have to partially cook the rice first because while I was testing, I did test it on the stove top with just the r raw rice and the raw meat filling the way we make it with the rolls and it didn’t work out. It took a long time and the rice was still partially uncooked. So that’s why we do it this way. I hope you guys give this recipe a try and let me know what you think in the comment section down below. I’m also working on a grape leaf pie. So just like dolmadas in a pie form just like this because this was so successful. I think you’re gonna love that one, too. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. If you want to print out this recipe, head on over to the website, deitrosdishes.com. Calorexi. Bye.