Onion Dolma

To make onion dolma, you need a great deal of enthusiasm, plenty of free time, and just a little of the poet in you. I first came across this dish while browsing traditional Azerbaijani recipes, and it seemed very interesting to me, but I simply ruined the first 10 onions.

And another thing—onion dolma ("sogan-dolma") is a great dish to make with the whole family. I’ll explain why a little later... First, the basics. You will need:

Take the onions. Remove the 2 outer layers. Next, stand an onion upright and make a lengthwise cut on one side, just as far as the center, then carefully separate it into layers (you need the next 2, or at most 4 if the onion is very large). Then fit one layer inside another and turn it very carefully. In our household, my husband was the best at this surgically precise task, because it requires complete concentration on the process rather than constant distractions from little things like cats, children, and other household residents.

make the cut like this

fit them together like this

Set aside each shell for the future dolma. If the onion layers are difficult to separate, you can boil the onion briefly to make it softer and more pliable.

Bring the rice to a boil and drain.

Put the ground meat, rice, carrot, and a little finely chopped onion from the cores into a frying pan and fry until half cooked. Season with salt and pepper and add half the spices. Let cool slightly.

Add a little olive oil to the bottom of a deep baking dish. Lightly season the insides of the onion shells with salt and pepper.

Stuff our onion shells gently and carefully, but confidently, filling them completely with the fried ground-meat mixture. Place them in the dish, making sure the meat filling faces upward.

Throw the remaining finely chopped onion cores into the frying pan, along with all the damaged onion pieces (I have yet to meet anyone who has not broken at least a couple of shells), also chopped. Peel the tomatoes and throw them into the pan too. Fry, then add the adjika, the remaining spices, the juice from the can of tomatoes, and the cumin. If you did not have adjika but did have a chili pepper, add that here too.

Pour the resulting sauce over the onions, trying not to get any on the meat on top—why mix the flavors?

If you have any ground-meat mixture left, you can roll it into meatballs and tuck them into the gaps between the stuffed onions. In that case, the meatballs should be small enough for the sauce to cover them completely.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the dish in the oven. As soon as the sauce comes to a boil, reduce the temperature to 150. And this is where you need your husband again (the children will do too).

When he—or, better yet, the whole family—comes into the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively, and asks, “Oh, what smells so delicious?” you need to reduce the temperature by 120 and leave the dish in the oven until a total of 3 hours has passed since you put it in.

The onion dolma is ready! Enjoy!

photo: Polina Trukhanova

The photograph of the finished dolma in this recipe was provided by Journalist, photographer, and creator of the Fotoeda.pro project Polina Trukhanova +7 (905) 738 93 79 | brannka@mail.ru