Serbian cuisine : Sarma

Someone asked me once, "what is your favorite meal" and without hesitance i answered : Sarma!

Sarma is one of the many original Serbian recipes and whoever tries it loves it! Today i am going to talk a little bit about preparing sarma and about eating them.

First of all sarma is some rice, meat and onion wrapped in unsliced sauerkraut.
So sauerkraut is finely chopped cabbage left in some barel with some liquids to age and become sour.

So for making sarma we need:
-500g nicely minced meat
-2 onion heads
-1 garlic head
-1 carrot
-100g rice
-1/2 spoon of paprika
-5g pepper
-salt (depends on how salty you want it to be)
-3 bay leafs
-200 ml oil
-200g bacon
-1 head sauerkraut

On a ripping hot pan spill some oil and then add your garlic, onion (finely chopped) and some shredded carrot. When you think these veggies fryed enough you add that 500g meat and half of our bacon chopped on cubes and keep that mix frying. Add some salt and pepper, add rice and half of tea spoon of paprika. Mix all that and let the flavors get to know each other before turning the heat off, letting it cool while we need our sauerkraut. (HINT: Pick some smaller sauerkraut heads because we need smaller leafs to make our sarma look perfect).

So, first step is over and it should look like this:

I didn't use my own pic for this because i do it first time and it doesn't look nearly good as this looks.

Next step. Use your sauerkraut leafs as a wrap for your sarma filling, straighten your leaf and use a spoon to fill the leaf with the filling (about two full spoons per leaf). Once you fill it up, wrap it up and its almost done.

It should look like this:

Before putting your sarmas to cook you need to put some sauerkraut leafs on the bottom of your cooking pot and gently line up your sarmas like i did. Put your bay leafs on top of your sarmas and close the cooking pot. Be ready to cook it for at least 5-6 hours slowly for the best result.

So it's done, and your sarma needs to look like this:

Thank you for your time guys, ill be doing some motivational guides as much as some cooking guides (ill be focused on Serbian national cuisine) as well. Be free to follow for more! Cheers!