How to Cook Golubtzy
Today I cooked Golubzy and decided to write about them…
Again, I have to warn that I do not "copy" any recipes from cooking books or sites, so please don't consider all my articles as "by the book" traditional Russian cuisine. This is more like traditional cuisine of our family...which is Russian 
First of all I would like to say a couple of words about traditional Golubzy. In general those are big meat balls with rice covered by cabbage leaves. You can try them in any traditional Russian or Ukrainian cuisine restaurant.
There is also another dish called Lenivye (Lazy) Golubzy. This option is for lazy cookers who do not want to spend too much time on the kitchen (like me ).
It is really a headache to cook Golubzy the original way. You need to cut only good and right sized leaves from cabbage, pour them with hot water so that they become flexible enough, and then you need to cover each and every meat ball with a leaf. You must do it very carefully and thoroughly so the cabbage leaves don't reopen before you put the meatballs it in the pot.
With Lazy Golubzy, you don't need to cover anything. You just cut the cabbage and put it inside the meatballs, and that's pretty much it.
Actually it was not a problem for my mom to cook make traditional golubzy, the main problem was me, because I hated cooked cabbage… So, the first thing I did with served golubzy was to open all the leaves on my plates and throw them away
I loved the taste of golubzy a lot, but without any cabbage. My mom decided not to waste her time and stopped covering golubzy with leaves. She just cut all the vegetables and put them in a pot together with meatballs.
Turned out it was a right solution for everybody in our family. The taste was exactly the same, but everyone could eat whatever he preferred.
You also can play with the recipe. For example, if you rather like vegetables and not meat, you can put a lot of cabbage and carrots with meat dressing together with just one little meat ball, or vice versa. If you want to try our "school" of cooking, you'll see how easy it is.
First, you mix ground beef, onion and rice. For 600-700 g of meat I add 1 medium sized onion, a half cup of rice and one tea spoon of salt. Then you add water (a cup or more) to make it all easy to mix.
Afterwards, you make meatballs and put them in a pot. Then you put on top grated carrots and shredded tomatoes, sweet pepper and cabbage. You can add as much vegetables as you like because they go good with a meat dressing. You can even make two layers – meat and vegetables covered with more meat and vegetables.
Then you pour everything with water until it covers the meat, and you add some salt and a couple of table spoons of tomato paste. You can add some black pepper and bay leaves on top as well.
When the water starts to boil, you cook golubzy covered on small fire for about 20-30 minutes. At the end you can add some parsley and/or dill.
Golubzy should be served with sour cream. Personally, I like them with dark brown Russian bread.
I really think that covered with cabbage or not, golubzy are very tasty and healthy! Hope one day you will enjoy them as well!
Stage one
Stage two
Stage three
...et voila!
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Hi, love your recipes and lazy cooking! Do you have to cook the rice before adding it to the meatballs? Thanks
Hi Liz, no, you don’t have to cook the rice before adding it. Enjoy!