I’m not too familiar with cooking cabbage. It wasn’t a food we ate much growing up. I love the look of red cabbage in the grocery store — gleaming and perfectly purple. I bought one yesterday and figured out what to do with it. I made yummy little cabbage rolls.

This is a great recipe because you can toss pretty much anything in it and it’ll be good. Trust me on this one. I had a little bit of tomato paste here and half of a lemon there, some celery, golden raisins, some leftover thyme from another dish. I threw it all in. I didn’t really measure anything, but I made some sort of meat stuffing and an hour and a half later I was licking my plate clean.

Here’s an approximation of what I made and how to make it.

Ingredients:

1 head of cabbage, red or green

1 pound of ground beef and/or pork

1 egg

1-ish onion, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1/4 cup golden raisins

1-ish can tomato paste

juice of half a lemon

2 Tbs. Worcerstershire Sauce

1 tsp. dijon mustard

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

2 Tbs. smoked paprika

2 Tbs. fresh thyme, chopped

3 Tbs. fresh parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

Marinara sauce

Chicken stock

6 mini bell peppers, sliced

feta cheese

 

Directions:

I had absolutely no idea how to peel the leaves off of a cabbage. They are on there so tightly. If you have a better method than this, please leave a comment. Bring a huge pot of salted water to a boil. Peel the outer leaves off the cabbage and discard. Cut the base off and shove a carving fork into the bottom. When water is boiling, insert the cabbage and turn it around with the fork for a couple of minutes. Place on a dish towel and try to carefully pry off the leaves. You may have to do this a few times. You want six to eight good leaves.

Place the peeled leaves back into the boiling water and parboil for a few minutes, till they are pliable. Drain and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking dish with bits of excess cabbage leaves and pour in some chicken stock till they are just covered.

Combine everything but the peppers, feta, marinara and stock.

Spoon the filling into the parboiled cabbage leaves and roll them up, securing with a toothpick if necessary. Place seam-side down in the baking dish. Top with marinara and bell peppers. Cover and bake for one hour. Serve with feta cheese over brown rice or egg noodles.