Balkan Dispatch
Dolmas — A Story of Stuffed Leaves and Shared Heritage
How dolmas became the national dish of every country in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean
We don’t know exactly where—or when—people began stuffing vegetables with rice and meat. Someone must have started it, and the tradition clearly stuck, but the origin story got lost in time. What we do know is this: the history of dolmas is as colorful, and that’s an understatement, as the region this dish comes from.
The part food historians seem to agree on is that dolmas were made a commonplace dish by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over much of Southeastern Europe and Western Asia for a good five centuries (before collapsing in 1922 and giving rise to modern-day Turkey).
I’m no historian—food or otherwise—but I can vouch for this version of the story anecdotally.
I was born in Bulgaria, a small and beautiful country bordering Turkey. Bulgaria fell under Ottoman rule from the 14th until the 19th centuries, and its culture and daily life were greatly influenced by the empire. This can explain why I grew up eating dolmas; they were a big part of my mother’s and grandmother’s cooking and at heavy rotation at family dinners.
