Run Oregon Test Kitchen: Stuffed Grape Leaves
You need:
1 jar of grape leaves (most grocery stores carry them near the olives)
1 cup of crumbled Feta cheese
1 lb. of browned hamburger (or ground turkey)
salt and pepper
3-4 lemons
This is what the grape leaves will look like after you rinse them. Photo from manfuelblog.com.
What to do:
- First, pull all the grape leaves out of the jar. They’re packed in a sort of brine, so do it over a tray or someplace easy to clean up. Rinse them off; I don’t separate them all to rinse them – I just put them in a colander and run them under cold water. You can press them to get more liquid out (like you do with thawed chopped spinach). You don’t want them DRY, just not sopping wet.
- Set up your work station: Two plates and a casserole dish with a lid, and a roll of paper towels. Put a few paper towels on one of the plates, where you’ll lay the grape leaves. This will soak up some of the water as you work. You’ll also need a large spoon, like a soup spoon.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix your browned meat with the Feta in a bowl. Add a little salt and pepper.
- Lay your rinsed grape leaves on the plate with the paper towels. Peel one off the top and put it on the other plate. Blot it dry-ish with a clean paper towel (you can use this paper towel until it’s soaked). Spoon about two spoonfuls of the meat/cheese in the center of the leaf. You’ll notice that the leaves aren’t uniform; they also can tear easily. So put enough meat that you can still roll it all up in the leaf.
- Roll the leaf in the same manner as rolling up a burrito.
- Place your little grape leaf/cheese/meat “burrito” in the casserole dish and repeat until you’ve used up all of your ingredients. If you have some smaller leaves left over, leave a little of the meat/cheese mixture.
- Bake your little creation for about 20-25 minutes. Because the meat is already cooked, you are just heating it up again. In a pinch you can use a microwave, but the over is much better so it heats evenly without hot spots.
- Take it out of the oven and serve on plates with a lemon wedge. The acidity of the lemon balances out the zing of the grape leaves.
I usually serve this with white rice, but you can see what sounds good to you. I don’t like the rice in the rolls, because of the texture, but some people like this.
Oh yeah, the extra meat/cheese and the little grape leaves you didn’t use – chop them up, make a little salad, heat in the microwave and then squirt a little lemon on it. Then you can eat this before “dinner” and have a little savory sneak-preview.
I pinned this to try. I LOVE stuffed grape leaves but they are so intimidating.
These are really easy. If you have little ones around that want to help, this is good for them too! Have fun and enjoy.