Turkish Stuffed Onions (Soğan Dolmasi)

This old-fashioned Turkish dish uses onions as a flavourful wrapping paper for meat and rice, simmered in a rich tomato gravy until tender.

The idea of stuffing vegetables with meat and rice was very fashionable to the Ottomans, and as a result you will find some version of this dish eaten in many former Ottoman countries, and even a bit beyond. ‘Dolma’ involves stuffing the season’s vegetables and cooking them in a sauce. In this case, we are using onions. Large onions require a short boil to render them tender, making layers upon layers of edible wrapping paper for a juicy dolma mixture. This mixture uses a combination of beef/lamb and rice, with a slight sweetness from the addition of currants. Once wrapped, the onions are cooked in a rich tomato sauce until tender. Depending on the freshness of your onions, they’re ready to eat in under an hour. Let’s go!