Romanian cabbage Rolls (sarmale)

Here's my tried and true cabbage rolls recipe that is a must have for every Christmas. First of all, the big difference between Romanian cabbage rolls and others are that we make them with sour cabbage.  You can find sour cabbage at pretty much all grocery stores, here in Calgary, we always find them at Safeway or any Polish store.  With sour cabbage you have to be careful because it is pretty salty, so what I usually do is a few hours before actually assembling the rolls, I put the cabbage in a big pot with water, so some of the salt gets out of it. Here are the ingredients you'll need:

• 3 lbs of ground pork (or whatever meat you prefer)
• 1/2 cup of long grain rice
• 1-2 onions
• 2 sour cabbages
• parsley
• dill
• 2 tbsp of oil
• 1 L of tomato juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Chop the onions and fry them in the oil until tender.  Add the dill and parsley and rice and 1/4 cup of water.  Cook until rice absorbs the water.  Add onion and rice mixture to ground pork and add your salt and pepper and mix well with your hands.  Now it's time to assemble the rolls.  Remove all the cabbage leaves and cut each leaf in half.  Romanian cabbage rolls are traditionally smaller than the Polish cabbage rolls, so that's why I recommend cutting each leaf in half, otherwise you can use the entire leave for one roll.  Fill each half leaf with a big tbsp of the meat mixture and roll.  Put all the rolls in a big pot and add the liter of tomato juice over the rolls.  Add more water if needed, the juice should cover the rolls entirely.  Cover the pot with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for about 4 hours.  After 2 hours remove the foil and put back in the oven.  Serve hot with a bit of sour cream on top.  Delicious! Enjoy!!