Varza (sp) Romanian cabbage rolls (vegetarian, onion, meat, cooked)

[Koale]

Hi, not sure if the rice should be cooked or raw. I've only made it a few times...results were questionable. We make this dish with sauerkraut/kelbasa sausage. Stock Pot is layered with cabbage rolls/sausage/saurkraut then covered with water for simmering. Delicious, but I'm not sure if I should be using cooked rice, seems the rice would mush-up if I use cooked rice. Any suggestions would be very helpful.
Thanks, Koale

[Cliffie]

Originally Posted by Koale

Hi, not sure if the rice should be cooked or raw. I've only made it a few times...results were questionable. We make this dish with sauerkraut/kelbasa sausage. Stock Pot is layered with cabbage rolls/sausage/saurkraut then covered with water for simmering. Delicious, but I'm not sure if I should be using cooked rice, seems the rice would mush-up if I use cooked rice. Any suggestions would be very helpful.
Thanks, Koale

I've never seen a recipe for cabbage rolls of any sort that didn't use cooked rice. If you use uncooked, you would have to somehow calculate how loosely to wrap the rolls to accommodate the rice as it expanded to 3x its uncooked size -- AND calculate how much liquid to use so it would soak into the rice AND still leave you some liquid to burble the rolls in. I would hope you could just, you know, make the rolls without hiring an engineer to work out the math!

[Gilah G.]

I've made cabbage rolls with uncooked rice with no problems or math involved..
Came out just fine.

[Cliffie]

And does your recipe call for uncooked rice? OP doesn't say.

[netwit]

My guess would be raw. I always use raw rice in cabbage rolls/sarma. No math involved here either.

[Shira_k]

Raw rice. I've made (jewish) sweet-smelling cabbage rolls with chopped meat and rice, as well as Mediterranean style stuffed vegetables, like grape leaves, squash, onion, with meat or vegetarian - never use cooked rice, always came out perfectly