If you have seen even just a handful of memes about Croats (or Balkan people in general), you have probably seen us gush over sarma. It is a surprisingly omnipresent dish (in Croatian: jelo). We eat it for special occasions – at weddings, funerals, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. However, it is also a Croatian version of weekly food prep – you just need to spend your Sunday rolling and cooking little parcels of meat and rice, and your family will have a decent home cooked meal for a whole week. It’s also our frozen meal of choice. If you have any children studying in other cities (or simply married to someone who refuses to spend hours making sarma for them), sending them frozen sarma is a perfect way to ensure that they are nourished in a proper Croatian way. Sarma is the ultimate comfort food.

By Croatian tragedies
”He/she again separates the sauerkraut from the meat!” Is something your Croatian grandmother might see as a tragedy because you are supposed to eat the sauerkraut – it is healthy!

1 head of pickled cabbage (sauerkraut style) 0,5 liter of tomato juice salt and pepper a bit of flour a bit of paprika powder a little bit of oil or pork lard (optional: a piece of smoked, cured meat)

Instructions:

1. Fry one sliced onion in a little oil or pork lard.
2. Combine it with raw ground meat, raw egg and uncooked rice. Stir well. You can add a bit of milk or melted bacon fat to make the mixture juicier.
3. Remove the leaves from one head of pickled cabbage. Remove the hard stem, and add the meat mixture to the middle. Fold the leaf so that you get little packages (look at the picture for instructions).
4. Transfer to a big pot and pour the water over it (it should cover the stuffed cabbage completely). If you have leftover cabbage leaves, shred them and add them to the pot as well. Season with salt and pepper. If you want, at this point you can add a piece of smoked, cured pork to give the sarma more flavour. It is there only to flavour the sauce, so it is not important how much pork nor how chewy it is.
5. Cook for at least 60 minutes, or longer if necessary (the meat mixture must be completely cooked).
6. To finish the sauce, prepare zaprška: fry flour in oil or pork lard until you get a paste. Add some paprika powder (a sweet version, it shouldn’t be spicy) and mix well. Pour tomato juice over it, and cook until it thickens.
7. Add zaprška (fried flour mixture) to the pot in which the meat parcels have been cooking (keep the water) and let it cook until the liquid thickens a bit.

How to wrap sarma by Sanja Mijac – Domaćica

Vine leaf sarma

Due to the nature of fermented cabbage (in Croatian: kiseli kupus), sarma is a largely autumn and winter dish. During warmer months we make stuffed peppers or vine leaf sarma. Stuffed peppers are very similar to sauerkraut sarma. The same mixture of meat and rice is used, but instead of cabbage leaves, we use bell peppers, which we again cook in the same red sauce. However, if you want something lighter for spring or summer months, you can try vine leaf sarma. The meat and rice mixture is the same, but for wrapping, we use young vine leaves or collard greens. However, the sauce is different – it is a light white dill sauce. This dish isn’t nearly as famous as sauerkraut sarma, but it should be! If you want to try it, here’s my mother-in-law’s recipe:

Vine leaf sarma / from the private family cookbook of Iva Antoliš, SpeakCro teacher

Ingredients (in Croatian: sastojci):

1 kg of ground meat (pork, beef or combination of the two)
⅔ cups of uncooked rice (short grain, starchy rice is better for this dish)
young vine leaves (*if you can pick your own leaves, choose the ones which are third or fourth on the vine, so that they are big enough, but not as chewy as older leaves), you can also use collard greens

1 egg
a bunch of fresh dill
1 cup of sour cream
1 spoonful of flour
1 teaspoon of sweet paprika powder
a few spoonfuls of oil

1. Fry one sliced onion in a little oil or pork lard.
2. Combine it with raw ground meat, raw egg and uncooked rice. Stir well. You can add a bit of milk or melted bacon fat to make the mixture juicier.
3. Add the meat mixture to the middle of a vine leaf. Fold the leaf so that you get little packages (look at the picture for instructions).
4. Transfer to a big pot and pour over the water (it should cover the stuffed vine leaves completely). Let it cook for at least 60 minutes, or until the meat mixture is completely cooked.
5. To finish the sauce, prepare zaprška: fry flour in oil or pork lard until you get a paste. Add a tiny bit paprika powder (a sweet version, it shouldn’t be spicy) and mix well. Pour some water over it, one cup of sour cream and a bunch of chopped leaves.
6.  Add zaprška (fried flour mixture) to the pot in which the meat parcels have been cooking (keep the water) and let it cook until the liquid thickens a bit.

Simplified quick sarma

Quick simplified sarma / from the private album of Iva Antoliš, SpeakCro teacher

Since I am one of those who don’t like the idea of spending hours cooking traditional sarma, I can also offer a recipe for (to use fancy culinary terms) deconstructed sarma, although lazy sarma would be a less pretentious name and more to the point. This is also a good recipe for those living in countries where whole leaves of sauerkraut cannot be so easily found. If you have shredded sauerkraut, this is a recipe for you! Before other Croatians declare this recipe to be blasphemous, I will state once again that this is not traditional sarma and that you should definitely try the real deal if you ever get a chance.

Ingredients:

1 onion
0,5 kg of ground meat (turkey, pork, beef or the mixture of these)
0,5 kg of shredded sauerkraut
1 cup of uncooked rice (starchy varieties are better here)
0,5 liter of tomato juice + 1,5 liter of water
spices (sweet paprika, black pepper, cinnamon, garlic powder, sugar, smoked salt)

Instructions:

1. Fry one sliced onion (if you want to make this recipe even simpler, substitute with onion powder). Fry ground meat until it is cooked. Add shredded sauerkraut let it fry for a bit.
2. Add spices. Cinnamon will give nice warmth and depth, paprika and smoked salt (or ordinary salt and smoked paprika) will give the sauce the recognizable sarma flavour. Be careful with black pepper and garlic powder – it shouldn’t be spicy. The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of your tomato juice. Sarma should be more sour than sweet, but a bit of sugar will give you the more rounded flavour.
3. Pour over tomato juice water. Add uncooked rice.
4. Try the sauce, and if necessary add more spices or more water. Let it cook for at least 30 minutes (or until the rice is cooked), but the more you let it cook, the more flavour develops.
5. Due to the starch in the rice, you probably won’t need to thicken the sauce. It should be the consistency of a creamy soup. If necessary, add slurry to thicken it.
6. Check the seasoning once again, or if it gets too thick, add more water.

This dish also freezes quite nicely, so you can make a double or triple batch if necessary. For a double batch, I used an 8-liter pot, so just be sure that yours is big enough. If you don’t have smoked salt nor smoked paprika, you can combine the salt with some melted bacon fat (e.g. the one you are left with after frying bacon for other dishes).

Featured image (on top): Sarma by Sanja Mijac – Domaćica