Turkish-Style Stuffed Tomato Recipe
This stuffed tomato recipe is a classic Turkish dish. Combining cooked rice with ground beef, onion, spices, pine nuts and currants, creates a delicious dish perfect for a light lunch or first course at dinner.
Spices in Stuffed Tomatoes
These stuffed tomatoes include allspice and cumin, both essential Turkish spices. Including fresh parsley and mint in the recipe makes a fresh and flavorful stuffing. In addition, adding currants and pine nuts creates a sweet and nutty flavor.
Dolmas
Dolmas are a family of stuffed dishes in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines. This tomato dolma is filled with a fragrant meat filling and simmered over low heat until just cooked. The result is a delectable dish perfect for lunch, light dinner, or first course. Other typical Turkish dolma recipes include stuffed grape leaves, stuffed zucchini, and stuffed peppers.
Stuffed Tomato Recipe for Vegetarians
There are both meat-filled and vegetarian rice-filled dolmas in Turkish cuisine. One vegetarian option is to stuff the tomatoes with Selva’s Summer Pilaf. Another option is to use the bulgur pilaf from this recipe.
Easy Healthy Dinners
For a full meal, this recipe goes great with any type of salad. Try an Arugula and Apple Salad recipe, or just shredded cabbage dressed with lemon juice, salt and olive oil for a refreshing accompaniment.
Turkish-Style Stuffed Tomato Recipe
Ingredients
- 10 large firm tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup basmati rice
- 1 pound ground beef or lamb
- 5 Tablespoons toasted pine nuts
- 1/2 cup chopped parsley
- 2 Tablespoons chopped mint leaves
- 1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
- 2 Tablespoons black currants
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup chicken broth or water
Instructions
- Slice almost through the stem end of each tomato, but do not sever as it will serve as a cover. Scoop out inside of each tomato with a teaspoon. Save pulp from 4 tomatoes and set aside. (You can use the remaining pulp in place of diced tomatoes in another recipe. It freezes well).
- Coarsely grate onion. Heat 2 Tablespoons butter in a saucepan and cook the onions until soft. Add 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Add rice, cover and simmer until the rice is cooked, about 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
- Put the cooked rice, meat, pine nuts, parsley, mint, spices, currants, tomato pulp, salt and pepper in a bowl. Mix thoroughly by hand. Stuff the tomatoes with the mixture and dot with the remaining 1 Tablespoon of butter. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a heavy shallow pan, add the chicken broth or water, cover and simmer 20-30 minutes until the meat filling is done. As the dolmas cook, add some water if necessary. Serve hot with fresh, crusty bread.