Remove the core of the cabbage. It's not absolutely necessary but it will ease our job later on.
Place the cleaned head of cabbage into boiling water until its leaves lose some of the rigidness for about 3 - 5 minutes. To save time start preparing the sauerkraut while the cabbage is boiling on its own.
Take it out from the water and let it cool down. If in hurry dash it into ice cold water. The technique called blanch and shock. Read more about it in the Cooking techniques in our KnowledgeBase.
Dice the onion and garlic.
Mix ground meat with diced onion, salt, paprika, egg, diced garlic and optional black pepper.
When the cabbage cooled to workable temperatures carefully remove the leaves.
Remove the stem if desired.
Fill one leaf at the time with the meat mix according to the leaf size. Generally one leaf can take 2 tablespoons of filling.
Roll it up.
Tuck the ends in.
Pile them up.
Cabbage stew:
Pour the oil into a cooking pot and heat it up.
Add the diced onion, celery and salt then saute until it gets a translucent/glassy look.
Lower the heat then continue cooking while stirring every now and again until the onion start the get a golden brown color for about 10 - 15 minutes.
Add garlic, black pepper, bay leaf, tomato and paprika then mix it together.
Add the sauerkraut. Always try new type of Sauerkraut before using them in dishes and rinse them if necessary.
Mix the sauerkraut well with the other ingredients.
Assembly:
Take half of the sauerkraut out onto a plate.
Place the rolls on top of the remaining sauerkraut.
Spread the other half of sauerkraut on top of the cabbage rolls.
Pour water slowly into the pot until the ingredients are ¾ immersed. Put the lid then bring it to boil.
Cook until the meat inner temperature reaches 145°F / 60°C but even better for 2 hours on low heat. The water doesn't need to be replaced expect all of its gone.