Table for TwoIraqi Dolma
A family-style pot of vine leaves, onions and vegetables stuffed with spiced rice and meat, flipped out onto a big tray.
Photo: Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash
⏱ 120 min📶 Hard👫 Serves 2☪ Muslim-friendly
Ingredients (for 2)
- Vine leaves, 20 (jarred, rinsed)
- Onions, 2 large
- Small eggplant & zucchini, 1 each
- Rice, 1 cup
- Minced lamb or beef, 200 g
- Tomato paste, 2 tbsp
- Lemon juice, 4 tbsp
- Ground allspice & cumin, 1 tsp each
- Fresh parsley & mint, a handful each
- Lamb chops, 4 (optional, for the bottom of the pot)
Steps
- Mix the rinsed rice, meat, tomato paste, half the lemon juice, spices, herbs and salt.
- Cut a slit in each onion, boil for 5 minutes and separate into layers; hollow out the eggplant and zucchini.
- Roll filling into the vine leaves and onion layers and stuff the hollowed vegetables.
- Line a pot with the lamb chops, pack the dolma in tightly, add water to just cover with the rest of the lemon juice, and weigh down with a plate.
- Simmer on low for 1 hour, rest 10 minutes, then flip the pot onto a large tray.
Cook it together: Rolling dolma is meant to be shared — sit across from each other and see whose rolls are neater.
👩🍳 Cook this together — step-by-step mode, timers & passport stamp
Or roll a random country and let the dice pick tonight's dinner.
