Asian Lamb Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Normally, this dish will be done with ground pork. I just happen to have some lamb meat today. It has lots of silver skin which will affect the texture of the filling. Take some time to remove it. Ground the lamb meat. Set the lamb aside, let’s prepare the cabbage.

This is a Chinese cabbage which is what we normally use for this recipe. Other kinds of cabbage will also work. You just take the leaves off. Remove the stem. Reserve 3-4 pieces of stem for later. The rest of the stem, you can put it in the pickle jar. I made a full tutorial on how to pickle vegetables. You can go check it out. Or you can slice the stem to make a stir fry with pork. We not gonna use these in this video.

Slice the reserved stem and roughly diced it. Seasoned it with 1/4 tsp of salt. Let it sit for 20 minutes. Squeeze all the liquid out so your filling won’t be too watery. Set it aside.

I soaked some dry shitake mushroom with 1 cup of water for 4 hours until they are soft. Squeeze the water out. Save the soaking liquid. We will use it later. Slice the mushroom and dice it. Set it aside.

Now, let’s make the filling. To the ground lamb meat, add 1.5 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of Chinese cooking wine, 1 tbsp of oyster sauce, 1 tsp of grated ginger, 1 tbsp of grated garlic, 1 tsp of toasted cumin powder, 1/4 tsp of salt or to taste, some freshly ground white pepper, the diced shiitake mushroom, the diced cabbage stem and 1/3 cup of diced scallion. Last but not least, a drizzle of sesame oil. Mix everything fist. Then stir the filling within one direction for a few minutes and throw the filling again and again for a few minutes as well to develop the texture. Set it aside and we gonna blanch the cabbage leaves.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add 1/2 tsp of salt, and a drizzle of vegetable oil. Even though I remove the stem, I still like to let the stem side to touch the water first. For about 10 seconds. Then drop everything and wait another 10 seconds. They should be soft and playable now.

Get a piece of cabbage leaves. Put some filling on it. Shape it into a short log. Fold 2 sides into the middle. Keep rolling. Kind of like making egg roll. Look at it. How easy is that? You just do the same thing and finish all of them.

Place them in a steamer. Put it above some cold water. Turn the heat to high. Once the water is boiling, count the time and let it steam for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce. About 2 tsp of vegetable oil, 2 tsp of garlic paste, 1 tbsp of cilantro stem, 2 tbsp of diced red bell pepper. Stir them until fragrant. Toss in a tbsp of oyster sauce, grind some white pepper to taste, follow up with 1 tbsp of soy sauce. Mix everything again. Now, this should smell amazing. Pour in the reserved mushroom soaking liquid. Bring it to a boil. Give it a taste to adjust the flavor. Mine needs 1/4 tsp of sugar and 1/8 tsp to balance the flavor. I also drizzled a little bit dark soy sauce to change color. Turn the heat to low. Add some cornstarch water in batches. Just keep stirring until the sauce thickens up.

Now, let’s go back and take a look of the cabbage rolls. The bowl will catch a lot of water that drips down from the lid. That is normal, don’t panic. Take it out and pour all the water into a bowl.

Pour the gravy all over the cabbage rolls and you are done.