Ingredients

First of all we prepare tomato sauce. Heat the oil in a pan and saute chopped onion for until soft. Add the tomatoes, sugar, vinegar.

Add water and Cook for 5 minutes and set aside.

Bring salted water to a boil, and submerge whole cabbage for 6-7 minutes. Then peel the leaves.

In a bowl, add minced meat, cooked rice, grated onion, chopped bell pepper and fresh herbs. Season with spices.

Use your hand and mix all ingredients together.

Now, we need a large bowl lined with cheese cloth to hold whole cabbage together when once you layered to set.
What we do for the first layer is: put one large leave at the bottom of the bowl, then arrange largest cabbage leaves, overlapping (as you see in the photos) so they line the bowl.

Now, put 1/3 of meat mixture at the bottom of the bowl and spread the meat evenly..

Then, put couple of cabbage leaves top of stuffing to separate the layers. Make sure that the leaves completely cover the stuffing and sides of the the bowl.

Again, put some more meat mixture over the new layer of leaves and spread it. Use your hand or a spoon and press the meat down and continue the layering process until meat mixture is used up.

Finally cover the stuffing with some blanched leaves and tucking all of leaves down the sides of the bowl, as you see in the photos.

Gather ends of cheesecloth together, twist the cloth and squeeze it tightly.

Take the whole stuffed cabbage and drop it into the tomato sauce. Cover the pot with a lid and allow to cook for 1 hour over medium heat.

You may cook the stuffed cabbage in the oven. In this case, after wrapping the cabbage with cheese cloth, cover it with foil and pop it into the oven at 175C degree and cook it for about 2 hours.Take stuffed whole cabbage out of the pot and place it in a serving plate.

Let it cool a little bit and remove the cheese cloth. Cut the stuffed cabbage into the pieces and serve it with mixture of yogurt+ garlic or with tomato sauce or mustard sauce.