Ukrainian cabbage rolls： The many faces of Holubtsi

Have you ever tried the Ukrainian spring rolls? They look like that and in different regions they have different shapes and they have different tastes but it's also very authentic Ukrainian dish from the cabbage. In this video I will show you the recipe of real Ukrainian spring roll we call it Holubtsi and through this dish we will understand more about Ukraine. Hello everyone my name is Ivan Klopotenko and I'm Famous Ukrainian Chef and in this video I'm trying to show that Ukrainian gastronomy is very wide and the Ukrainian gastronomy has to be part of the world and we have a lot of things which we can share with you. So let's go to the cabbage. If we speak about this dish it has the name in Ukrainian Holubtsi and normally it translates like small pigeons because pigeon is Holub in Ukrainian language. I don't know who named them like this but it's true maybe because their shape looks like a shape of a pigeon breast but nobody knows we need still to discover. What I know for sure that main ingredient is cabbage because in Ukraine cabbage is very popular and very common. During my expedition all around the Ukraine in different regions I found different totally different recipes of cabbage. Somebody put this cabbage to wooden oven for the night and then take it from the wooden oven and start to eat and it's kind of with one taste. In one region people ferment them in other regions they eat from fermented cabbage different rolls. In other regions they do Kapusniak which literally means cabbage soup or we don't have the soups we have like cabbage boiled cabbage dish. It's very common for the central Ukraine and for us it's something very important but still we need to discover also why it's so important. But this dish you can find in different regions with the different tastes but still the same Holubtsi. What you have to do you have to to take skin it's not the skin it's leaves and we have to boil these leaves and then we have to to roll filling to these leaves and that's all. That's something very amazing and normally it's a traditional dish for the Christmas for the Easter traditional thing for the weddings and actually when we'll go to the shop and you want to buy some ready food ready meal you definitely will find cabbage Holubtsi. Once in a month I'm trying to travel all around Ukraine to understand what is the real Ukrainian cuisine. Now I'm in the region in the western Ukraine region which calls Hutsulshina. When I go to some family when I go to some region all the time I will find the cabbage. Now I'm in restaurant and I ordered cabbage different types different dishes from cabbage I start to think why it's so important for us. First of all it can be fermented so fermented cabbage it's something very common and very unique for us and I think that's one one of idea why cabbage is so important. Cabbage is essential in Ukrainian cuisine. We ferment it we combine it in different dishes like Holubtsi with all kinds of filling and we use it for a special holiday meals. Few ingredients they are so simple as central as cabbage. First of all you have to take leaves off normally we are using just simple cabbage but you have the new cabbage but we never use the new cabbage we are using the old cabbage because in the more closely to September we take this cabbage from the fields and the leaves start to be not so crunchy but they start to be more firm and it's much more easier to work with them because if you will take the new cabbage and you will put it to the water it will have very awful structure. Here is one life hack you have to put the whole cabbage to the water for two minutes and then after you can take it off and now it's going to be much more easier to take the skin off. My recipe I'm using the mushrooms because they have the nice aroma normally it's a separate mushrooms also very common for Ukraine. I put mushrooms to the water and I cook rice. So next we have to take carrots and onions and to fry it on the pan. After this I mix onions and carrots with the ground beef and I add this mixture of ground beef carrots onions with the rice. So normally combination of rice, meat, onions and carrots it's the most famous filling but before the rice came to the Ukraine here you can find easily millet. Yellow millet it was very common for us so we put out of the cabbage leaves we put millet or buckwheat. Buckwheat or millet it was very famous ingredient to the whole tea. Last but not the least we have to take our cooked leaves inside we are putting some a bit of meat and rice and now we roll it. So normally it's a rolled cabbage but it looks like pigeon breast. Now we have to put all of them to the wooden oven with the tomato puree and some sour cream. So 40 minutes in oven and you have our famous Holubtsy. You can eat it whatever you want how you want because that's very tasteful it has the taste of the our cabbage with the combination of other ingredients. So for us very traditional dish.