Dolma in the UK: what it is, how to order it, where to find it

Name: Dolma
Total time: 75 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 8 small peppers, or a mix of peppers and tomatoes; 200 g short-grain rice, rinsed; 1 large onion, finely chopped; 100 ml olive oil; 2 tbsp currants, 2 tbsp pine nuts; a handful each of parsley, dill and mint, chopped; 1 tsp allspice, half a tsp cinnamon, salt, pepper, 1 tsp sugar; juice of a lemon; 200 ml water

Quick answer

Dolma means 'stuffed', and covers any vegetable filled with rice or meat: peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines and onions, as well as vine leaves and cabbage leaves, which are strictly sarma, 'wrapped'. Meat dolma is served hot with yoghurt as a main; olive-oil dolma with rice, currants and pine nuts is served cold as a meze. In the UK you will find both in lokanta restaurants and the cold kind on nearly every meze menu.

Calories and nutrition

Calories: 340
Protein: 7 g
Carbs: 42 g
Fat: 17 g
Salt: 1.2 g

Portion: Three stuffed peppers, olive-oil style, served cold.

The meat version served hot with yoghurt is about 420 kcal for three.

Estimates for a typical portion, based on standard UK and USDA food composition data. Actual values depend on the recipe and the restaurant.

What dolma is

The filling is either rice cooked with onion, herbs, currants, pine nuts and a great deal of olive oil, for the cold version, or rice mixed with minced lamb, onion and parsley, for the hot version. Hollowed peppers, tomatoes, small aubergines or courgettes are packed with the filling and simmered in a pan with a little water and oil until the vegetable is tender and the rice cooked. Cold dolma, zeytinyağlı, is served at room temperature with lemon; hot dolma, etli, is served with garlic yoghurt. Stuffed peppers are the commonest in the UK; a mixed dish of pepper, tomato and courgette is the lokanta classic.

Dolma versus sarma

Strictly, dolma is a vegetable that is hollowed and stuffed, and sarma is a leaf that is wrapped around a filling: vine leaves, cabbage, chard. In practice everyone calls stuffed vine leaves dolma, and menus in the UK use the words interchangeably. The filling is the same; the technique differs. Vine-leaf sarma is the smaller, fiddlier and more prized of the two.

How to judge it

The vegetable should be tender but hold its shape, and the rice inside should be cooked through and moist, not dry or crunchy. Cold dolma should taste of olive oil, lemon and herbs, with the sweetness of currants; hot dolma of lamb and onion. A dolma that has burst or a filling that has gone mushy was overcooked. Served with thick yoghurt, either version is a meal.

Where in the UK it is done well

Lokanta restaurants in North London make hot meat dolma at lunch, and meze restaurants everywhere serve the cold kind. Turkish Cypriot kitchens in Haringey and Enfield have a particularly strong stuffed-vegetable tradition. The ranking below counts restaurants in our directory whose name signals dolma.

How to order it

Ask whether the dolma is 'etli' (meat, served hot) or 'zeytinyağlı' (olive oil, served cold), and order accordingly: hot as a main with yoghurt, cold as a starter with lemon. A mixed plate of stuffed vegetables at a lokanta is a good vegetarian lunch.

Where it's done well

UK councils with the most dolma specialists, by restaurant name, in our directory.

Restaurants near you

Search by postcode or use your location to find restaurants likely to serve dolma near you.

Make it at home

Serves 4 · 75 min

Ingredients

8 small peppers, or a mix of peppers and tomatoes
200 g short-grain rice, rinsed
1 large onion, finely chopped
100 ml olive oil
2 tbsp currants, 2 tbsp pine nuts
a handful each of parsley, dill and mint, chopped
1 tsp allspice, half a tsp cinnamon, salt, pepper, 1 tsp sugar
juice of a lemon
200 ml water

Method

Cook the onion in half the oil over low heat for ten minutes. Add the pine nuts, then the rice, and stir for two minutes. Add the currants, spices, herbs, sugar, salt and 100 ml water, cover and cook for ten minutes until the water is absorbed; the rice stays half-cooked.
Cut the tops off the peppers, remove the seeds, and fill three-quarters full with the rice. Replace the tops.
Stand them in a pan, pour over the remaining oil, the lemon juice and 100 ml water, cover and simmer over low heat for 40 minutes.
Cool in the pan and serve at room temperature with lemon.

Do not overfill; the rice swells. For the hot meat version, replace half the rice with minced lamb, skip the currants and sugar, and serve hot with garlic yoghurt.

Related dishes

Yaprak Sarma

Yaprak sarma are vine leaves rolled tightly around a filling of rice, onion, herbs, currants and pine nuts, cooked in olive oil and lemon and served cold. They are the most recognisable Turkish meze and the most labour-intensive, each roll made by hand no thicker than a finger. In the UK they are on every meze menu and in every Turkish deli; the difference between the hand-rolled and the tinned is obvious in one bite.

Meze

Meze are the small cold and hot dishes that open a Turkish meal: hummus, cacık, haydari, ezme, stuffed vine leaves, aubergine in several forms, fried liver, halloumi and a dozen more. A meze table is meant to be shared slowly with bread and rakı, and in the UK a spread of six or eight is a full meal for two. Meze is also the best way to eat well in a Turkish restaurant on a budget, and the clearest test of a kitchen's care.