Kelem dolmasi

This Kelem dolmasi has 0g protein for 0 calories per serving — full macros included, which most recipe sites omit.

Nutrition & macros (per serving)

Method

1. First boil the rice for eight minutes. Meanwhile, peel and finely chop the onion. Then chop the herbs.
2. The recipe didn't really say what to do with the chickpeas (also known of course as garbanzo beans), beyond soaking them overnight and rinsing them. I used canned chickpeas, since I've never actually seen them dried. I decided to chop/mash them slightly so they would better incorporate into the filling.
3. Chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) roughly chopped
4. Now mince the lamb (I used my mini food processor). Here's where I ran into another problem: what to do with the lamb fat this recipe calls for? Mince it? Melt it? Does lamb fat even melt? I decided to mince mine. Thankfully, my husband doesn't actually read this blog because he'd be horrified if he knew I put fat in the dolma on purpose.
5. Minced lamb and its good friend, minced fat. Ew.
6. The ingredients for the dolma stuffing include onion, cilantro, chickpeas and turmeric.
7. Anyway, now get your hands into all that slimy raw meat and mix in the onion, spices, chickpeas, rice, chopped herbs and fat. Add a little salt and pepper for good measure. In fact, based on my results I would say to err on the side of a little extra salt and pepper.
8. Mix well with your hands until the stuffing looks something like this.
9. Fill the biggest saucepan you own with salted water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Now pull the outer leaves off of the cabbage (save them) and drop the rest of it, whole, into the water. Let it boil for three or four minutes, turning it if the water level isn't quite high enough to completely cover it.
10. The reason you are doing this is because it's difficult to get whole cabbage leaves off of an American cabbage. The cabbages you typically buy in our supermarkets come in very tight round balls, and because the leaves are crispy they will snap and crack when you try to pull them off in an un-blanched state. Blanching them for a few minutes makes it so they will come righ

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Recipe & nutrition data via TheMealDB. Macros are estimates — verify against your ingredients and portions.