Stuffed Cabbage Woes

I’ve been talking about stuffed cabbage for at least six months. It’s an old recipe of my mom’s and I just haven’t made it in years. No clue why, things just happen I suppose. So last night I go to the grocery store and get all the fixins’. I came home, cleaned out my fridge, like I do every time I go to the grocery store, washed my dishes and got started. I like to begin with a clean kitchen if possible.

I was happily prepping and taking pictures of everything when my fella arrived. Before I knew what had happened I had stuffed all the cabbage and put it in the pot. I absolutely forgot to take a picture of the stuffing process, that’s probably the most important part. Blame it on the booze, or the good conversation. I like to drink while I cook, and I really like to cook.

It’s a pretty simple recipe, and I used ground turkey instead of beef.

Ingredients

1 head of cabbage

1lb of ground turkey/beef/whatever

1 can of tomato sauce

1/4 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 egg

splash of milk

breadcrumbs

spices (parsley, oregano, salt, pepper)

rice

Here we go.

Pour a little oil in the bottom of a big pot, chop some onion and throw it in there. Let it sweat on medium heat for a few minutes, then add a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Let the garlic sweat for 2-3 minutes then add the can of tomato sauce and one can of water. (I wanted to make my tomato sauce but the Roma tomatoes at the store hadn’t ripened yet.)

Let the sauce simmer on med-low and get out the cabbage. Hold the cabbage above your head and then smash it on the counter as hard as you can, with the bottom hard spot hitting the counter. That should break loose the hard spot and you’ll be able to pry it out of there. Then peel off whole leaves of cabbage and rinse. (Some people just cut that hard spot out with a knife I guess?)

Rinse the cabbage leaves and then steam them for 2-3 minutes tops. If you don’t have a steamer you can just put them in a pot with a little boiling water. The goal is to get them flexible enough to roll but not cook them so much that they are tender.

Now mix the ground meat with the egg, a splash of milk and about 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs, add more if it is still too slimy. This is the time to add the spices, then mix that shit up.

This is the part where my fella came in. We were chit chatting away while I rolled each meatball size amount of meat into a cabbage leaf and secured it with a toothpick (or three toothpicks).

Place those babies in the pot with the sauce you made, put a lid on it and cook for around 45 minutes on medium heat.

While that’s happening make some rice. When it’s all done just spoon out some rice on a plate and place a stuffed cabbage on top, ladle sauce over everything and you’re finished.

Amazing.

If anyone has any questions about the rolling up process feel free to ask. Apologies for getting sidetracked, it happens.

Tags: cabbage, dinner, food, ground turkey, recipe, recipes with turkey, stuffed cabbage, turkey, turkey meat