Cabbage lasagna with minced meat

A very tasty summer dish, reminiscent of regular lasagna, but instead of lasagna sheets, young cabbage leaves are used here. The minced meat for the filling can be any kind, I used chicken fillet.

Ingredients:

• young cabbage - 2-3 pcs. (depending on size)
• meat (any) - 700 g
• onions - 1-2 pcs.
• carrots - 1-2 pcs.
• tomatoes - 4-5 pcs. (or tomato juice, tomato paste)
• greenery
• eggplants - 1 pc. (optional)
• salt
• pepper
• butter
• vegetable oil
• other spices to taste

for the sauce:

• cream 9% (or sour cream) - 100 ml
• chicken eggs - 1 pc.
• cheese - 70-100 g

Preparation:

To make cabbage lasagna, it is better to use young cabbage. First you need to cut the stalks out of the washed cabbage and disassemble it into leaves.

Place cabbage leaves in boiling salted water for 3 minutes, immediately remove and dry, for example, on a towel. The cabbage should not be boiled, but a little raw.

Finely chop the onion and fry in vegetable oil until transparent.

Grate the carrots and add to the onion, simmer a little.

Pass the meat through a meat grinder (I used chicken fillet), salt, pepper and combine with onions and carrots, lightly fry.

You can add diced eggplants, after removing the bitterness.

Peel the tomatoes, cut into cubes and add to the minced meat. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Add finely chopped herbs. The minced meat should not be dry, it needs to be juicy.

Grease a baking dish with high sides with butter or vegetable oil. Line the bottom of the mold with cabbage leaves, a layer of minced meat on top, and then leaves again.

So alternate until you run out of minced meat or cabbage leaves. There should be a layer of cabbage leaves on top. I made 2 layers of minced meat and, accordingly, 3 layers of cabbage leaves.

Prepare the sauce:

Grate the cheese on a fine grater. Beat the egg lightly. Combine cream, egg and grated cheese, stir thoroughly, add salt and pepper.

Pour the resulting sauce over the cabbage lasagna, cover with foil and bake in a preheated oven for 20-30 minutes. 5-10 minutes before readiness, open the foil and sprinkle the lasagna with grated cheese (ideally, Parmesan, of course, but in principle, you can replace it with something else).

Cut the lasagna into pieces with a sharp knife, and the cabbage lasagna with minced meat is ready!

• Boil the pasta in a large amount of salted water until al dente is ready - this is when the dough has a soft shell, but an uncooked core, and is slightly crunchy when you taste it. Place the minced meat in a heated frying pan and cook, stirring constantly, not allowing the meat to bake in lumps.
• When the minced meat is almost ready, add tomato paste diluted with boiled water and cooled to room temperature. You can also use fresh tomatoes, previously rubbed through a metal sieve or tomato juice. At the end of cooking, sprinkle the meat filling with pepper and salt.
• Cut the white cabbage into small strips, chop the onion into half rings. Fry vegetables in sunflower oil until soft. Grease the baking dish. Layer layers of lasagna sheets alternating the fillings - meat and vegetable.
• Sprinkle the top layer of lasagna generously with grated Parmesan or other sharp cheese. Bake for 20 minutes in a preheated oven at 180 degrees. Lasagna with minced meat and cabbage is good both hot and on the second day, when the dish is soaked in juice.

Disassemble the cabbage into leaves. Place about 15 large leaves for 2 minutes. into boiling salted water. Drain in a colander, then place on napkins. Finely chop the remaining cabbage leaves.

Peel carrots, onions and garlic, chop and fry in vegetable oil for 3 minutes. Add minced meat and cook for 5 minutes. Add chopped cabbage, cook for 3 minutes.

Remove from heat, add half of the grated cheese, 2 tbsp. l. cream, salt, pepper. Stir and set aside.

Prepare cream sauce. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour and cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Pour milk in a thin stream. Add salt and nutmeg. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook, stirring constantly, 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Cover a rectangular baking pan with a sheet of parchment. Lay out a layer of cabbage leaves and put half of the filling on them. Drizzle with a few spoons of sauce.

Place another layer of cabbage leaves and the remaining filling. Cover with remaining cabbage leaves, pour sauce on top and sprinkle with cheese. Place in an oven preheated to 180°C and bake for 15 minutes.

BY THE WAY“Lasagna,” which uses young cabbage leaves instead of thin sheets of dough, can be prepared with different fillings and different sauces. For example, instead of meat, take fresh mushrooms from a new harvest. Or make a vegetable filling and bake the dish with tomato sauce.

This is certainly not traditional Italian lasagne. In it, dough sheets are replaced with cabbage leaves. It has less calories. But nevertheless, the result is a juicy, aromatic, satisfying and very tasty dish. And another advantage of cabbage lasagna is its ease of preparation.

To prepare cabbage lasagna with minced meat, we will need the products indicated in the list.

Separate the cabbage leaves from the cabbage. If the sheet breaks, it's not a big deal. We cut off thickenings from the leaves.

Place the leaves in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then remove.

Place the minced meat in a frying pan with vegetable oil and fry, stirring constantly so that there are no lumps.

Finely chop the onion.

We send it to fry with the minced meat.

Let's start preparing the sauce. Melt the butter in a frying pan, add flour and fry, stirring, until the flour changes color slightly.

We get a thick oily mass.

Add milk, nutmeg to it and mix quickly with a whisk so that there are no lumps.

Add half the cheese to the sauce, which we first grate on a medium grater.

Add tomato sauce and garlic squeezed through a press to the minced meat.

Let's start assembling the lasagna. Grease the baking dish with vegetable oil. Line with cabbage leaves. Coat the cabbage leaves with sauce. Turn on the oven to warm up to 180 degrees.

Place half of the minced meat on top of the sauce.

We put the leaves on the minced meat, and the sauce on them.

Add the second half of the minced meat to the sauce, level it out. For minced meat - sauce.

Cover with a lid and place in the oven for 40 minutes. Temperature - 180 degrees.

Remove, remove the lid, sprinkle with the other half of the cheese and place in the oven for another 5 minutes without covering with the lid.

Cabbage lasagna with minced meat is ready. Slice and serve.

Bon appetit!