Stuffed Cabbage

Stuffed cabbage is great for the coldest of winter nights!

Stuffed cabbage, Golapki, Golumpki, whatever you call them, are delicious comfort food. They are mostly eastern European in origin with recipes that vary from Polish, to Hungarian, to Ukrainian. I'm going to say that my recipe is a mutt if there is such a thing. It's inspired by my former mother-in-law Jane and my grandmother Lilian Scangarella.

Jane's recipe was rooted in Polish, and my grandmother's, I'm really not sure. She was Irish and most of what I remember of her cooking, boiled down to 4 dishes. Stuffed cabbage, oven cooked BBQ chicken, corned beef and cabbage, and a ground meat and pasta dish that had no name in New Jersey, but is called American Chop Suey here in Maine. Otherwise my grandmother's culinary repertoire was meat and potatoes. I will be sharing the BBQ chicken and Chop Suey recipes in future posts. I'm not thinking anyone needs instruction on how to boil meat, potatoes, and cabbage to death, so I'll not go down the corned beef rabbit hole....

For now, let's get back to the stuffed cabbages. My recipe includes rice, ground beef, seasonings, a tomato based sauce, and sauerkraut. Depending on the country of origin, I have seen ground pork and chicken used, many variations in spices, and the elimination of the kraut. It's really a matter of taste and what you're used to. What's most important really is the proportion of rice to meat to egg, then you can be creative.

I think the most difficult part of this recipe is to pre-cook the cabbage so it's soft and able to wrap nicely around the filling. I use one of 2 ways depending on how much time I have. Sometimes I place the cabbage in a stock pot filled with some salt and enough water to cover it and bring it to a boil for 10 to 15 minutes depending on how big the cabbage is. Then I put the cabbage in an ice bath to stop it from cooking, Once cool enough to handle, I gently peel back the leaves and pat them dry for filling. If I feel like standing at the pot and extracting leaves one at a time, I use a paring knife to cut out as much of the core as possible as pictured here. I find it easier to gradually remove sections of the core rather than trying to cut really deep and then have to gauge it all out, this is the first round of core removal. The trick is not to have leaves fall off in the process.

Cabbage with part of the core removed.

Once I get as moch core out as possible, I emmerce the cabbage in salted boiling water and after 6 or 7 minutes, I begin peeling softened leaves away with tongs. Depending on the size of the cabbage, this can take 10 to 20 minutes.

Place core side down in lghtly salted water to cover in a stock pot.

As cabbage leaves soften, carefully peel them off with tongs.

Set cabbage leaves on a paper towel to cookl and dry a bit.

At this point you can put the leaves in a zipper bag in the fridge and save to assemble later.

Now we can talk filling, the recipe below is for 1 pound of ground beef and it makes about 20 stuffed cabbage rolls.

THE RECIPE

Saute onions and garlic for stuffed cabbage sauce

Sauce with tomatoes cooked down and remaining ingredients added.

Cabbage filling ingredients.

Cabbage leaves stuffed and rolled in the baking pan.

Stuffed Cabbages covered with sauce.

One head of cabbage

For the cabbage filling

1lb ground beef

1-1/2 to 2c cooked rice (you want about equal volume of rice to the ground d beef

1 egg

1c diced onion

1t Salt

1t Pepper

1t Garlic Powder

2-3t Paprika (smolked or plain)

1/2 t caraway seeds

1/2 t coriander seeds

(I grind the caraway and corriander in a mortar and pestool. I think it distributes the flavor more evenly than the whole seeds)

For the sauce

1/8c olive oil for sauteeing

1 large onion skuced thin

3-4 cloves of garlic minced

1- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes

1/4 c brown sugar

1/4 c apple cider vinegar

1c packed and drained sauerkraut

salt / pepper to taste

1/2c sauerkraut for topping

In a large heavy pot, combine olive oil, sliced onion and minced garlic and simmer for 5 to 10 miutes until onion is tender and the garlic begins to turn golden.

Add the tomatoes and simmer until they reduce by about 1/4. Stir in the brown sugar and cider vinegar and simmer to thicken a bit. Stir in the sauerkraut and add salt and pepper to taste.

Once the cbabage leaves are prepared and ready to stuff and the sauce is done, in a large mixing bowl combine all the filling ingredients and mix until completely blended and uniform in appearance and texture.

Ladle some sauce to just wet the bottom of a 9X13" baking pan.

Take the smallest cabbage leaves and lay them on the sauce in the pan to create a nice bad to lay the stuffed cabbage rolls onto.

Use about 1/4 to 1/2 c of the mixture in each of the largest cabbage leaves.

Mold the filling into an oval shape and place at the core end of a cabbage leaf.

Roll the leaf toward the wide end tucking the sides in as you roll. (sorry, I didn't get photos of the rolling; my friend Penney was helping and could have take a pic or two but I guess we got sidetracked chatting.) The rolling is the easy part as long as you don't try to overstuff.

Once rolled place them with the seam side down on their nice bed of cabbage and sauce in the baking pan.

Once all of the filling is used up and the pan is full (it's OK to layer the rolls if the pan is deep enough), pour remaining sauce to completely cover all the cabbage rolls. (If you do end up with 2 layers spreas a bit of suace onve the first before adding more rolls) You may need to spread ithe suace with a spatula, then take the remaining sauerkraut and 'srpinkle' it on top.

Cover with foli.

Bake in a 350 degree over for 90 minutes.

After an hour, check to see if the sauce has thickened, if it looks too thin, uncover and bake for the remaining half hour.

If you're not cooking for a crowd, this freezes really well. I usually allow 3 - 4 rollls per person and freeze in groups of 6 or 8. They can be reheated in the oven or microwave.