Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

There are a ton of different recipes out there for cabbage rolls.  Cabbage rolls are pretty much a meat filling wrapped and cooked in a cabbage leaf.  Kind of like a variation of a dumpling but with a cabbage wrap in place of dough type of outside.  The beauty of this dish is that you can use anything you want on the inside filling. Ground Beef, ground pork, ground chicken, or ground turkey all work really well.  You can add rice to it, you can keep it carb free or paleo and skip the rice…the possibilities are endless.  This recipe is my shabang version of it.  Feel free to add or leave things out.

Here's what it looks like cut in halfsies so you can see what's inside:  

You ready to try this recipe?  

Go grab the following items...I'll wait here:

1 large cabbage

1/2 pound ground beef

1/2 pound ground pork

1/2 pound ground sausage

1 egg

1 large onion

fresh, chopped garlic

chicken or beef stock

1 can of tomato sauce

In order to make cabbage rolls, you have to first slightly cook your cabbage so the leaves are soft enough to roll your filling into.  You can do this ahead of time and refrigerate your cabbage leaves for rolling later if you're pressed for time, but this part doesn't really take that long.  

I try to find a large sized one, but it doesn't have to be bowling ball sized.  Just large enough to get about 15 good sized cabbage leaves off of it.  In a pot large enough to submerge your cabbage head in, add water to fill about half of the pot and set to boil.

Grab your cabbage head and give it a quick rinse and notch a core using a sharp knife. 

Pull off the bottom and part of the core like this.

By now, your water should be boiling so I carefully drop my cabbage into the water.  Please be careful…it's kind of obvious why, right?

Pretty quickly, the first outer layer will start to come off.  I use metal tongs to handle my cabbage.

The idea is to get it soft but not over cook it because you'll be cooking it again once it's wrapped around your delicious stuffing.  So I plop it in a large bowl with water and ice to stop the cooking process.

Then I transfer it to a paper towel lined pan like so...

If you notice that you need to re-cut some of the leaves away from the core, you can just do it carefully using some tongs and a sharp knife.  No need to remove the cabbage from the pot.

Tah-dah!

When the core is about this size, I just take it out and let it cool.  You can either chop it up and use in your sauce OR you can use it for another snack that I like to make.  I'll post that quick recipe later.

Sidenote-I save the water that I cooked the cabbage in.  You can use it to cook pasta in or use it as soup base even.  The cabbage gives it kind of a sweet flavor so don't throw it away!

Here's the second part of the recipe-the filling.  Some people like to use just beef or just pork, but me?  I  like to do a combo of ground beef, ground pork and ground sausage.  Costco sells this breakfast sausage that is unfrozen: 

I use half of pound of this sausage.  It comes in casing, so I just squeeze the sausage out of the casing.  Look, we're all adults here.  I have no problem doing that.  If you're a bit weirded out by casing, then just use the Farmer John's sausage that comes in the plastic wrapping that has no casing.  Up to you.

This costco brand has no preservatives and I don't mind squeezing it out the casing.  It's kind of fun in a gross way.  Shrugs.

I also use ground sirloin because it's typically 8 to 10% fat so it's very lean.  No worries,  there's plenty of fat in the sausage so there's no need to panic.  

So to recap, it's 1/2 pound ground sirloin, 1/2 pound ground pork and 1/2 pound of ground pork sausage…so if you're keeping up with the math, it's 1 1/2 pound in total.  Keep that in mind if you'd rather substitute ground chicken or turkey. 

I also like to add some black pepper and seasoning salt.

Whenever I work with beef, I like to use worcester sauce. I just splash in a few shakes. You don't have to.  I don't think any other recipes for cabbage rolls use it.  Take it or leave it.

I finely mince up one large onion.

Add the onion and a heaping tablespoon or two of fresh, crushed garlic to the party.

Add 1 cup of cooked long grain rice.  Any kind is fine.  I just happened to have Jasmine rice. 

 I wouldn't use uncooked or short grain, sticky rice.  

If you have cold already cooked rice on hand, it works perfectly.  I didn't so I quickly cooked up some rice.  And guess what???  I used some of the cabbage water because I am a water conservation ninja like that.  I cooked 1/2 a cup which yielded about a cup.  You can use less or more.  I usually start out thinking I'm going to keep this carb-free and skip the rice, but then I crumple and add rice because it's soooo good in this dish.  

I add the rice and one egg and mix away.  

All ready for rolling into cabbage leaves.

Grab a cabbage leaf.  Each leaf has a think, tough spine.  You can either notch it out or I just use a knife to thin it down, like this:

Then I spoon 2 large spoonfuls of filling onto the leaf.  You start on the spine end NOT the leafy end.

Fold the spine end over, 

tuck in your sides, 

and roll.

Tah dah! 

I like to secure with a toothpick.  If you're baking this in the oven, you don't have to secure with toothpicks.  Just lay each roll seam side down in the pan.  I'm going to be cooking this in a pot so I like to secure them.  I don't think they'd come undone.  It's not like we're vigorously boiling them…what's the worst that could happen anyway? At worst, we'd end up with a pot of yummy cabbage soup, I guess.

I got 15 rolls out of this recipe.  If needed, you can half overlap two smaller leaves over one another to create a larger cabbage leaf rather than just trying to use the large ones.  It's up to you.  It's just as easy to roll the two smaller semi-overlapped pieces.  It just takes a little bit of practice.

I layer them seam side down in a heavy pot like a dutch oven.  I even chopped up some of the middle of the cabbage and sprinkled on top.

Grab a lemon, roll it on the counter and cut it half.  

Squeeeeeeeze all the juice all over your cabbage rolls.  

I added about a cup of homemade chicken broth, but canned is perfectly acceptable.  Here's a link to some easy chicken broth I make and freeze using leftover Costco rotisserie chicken.You could even use beef broth or even the left over cabbage water if you wanted.  I just added enough to cover the first layer of cabbage rolls.

Then I grabbed the can of tomato sauce and poured it on top of the cabbage rolls.  

This is a 15 oz sized can.  It's even a generic brand.

I add 1 tablespoon of butter on top…well, because butter is so nice.  

Bring it to a gentle, rolling boil like this:

Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.  

Dish up and don't forget to ladle on some of your yummy tomato broth sauce.

That's it.  You are done!  Eat.

You can also do a yummy asian-y variation of this that doesn't involve sausage or tomato sauce.  You could use ground chicken, chopped onion, tons of chopped green onion, garlic and chopped water chestnuts as your filling.  Then make your cabbage rolls and simmer in chicken broth with ginger and lemongrass.