Test Kitchen #8: Stuffed Cabbage

Most of us might have some childhood memory of stuffed cabbage for dinner or some special family occasion. A big pot or baking pan filled with wet greenish leaves, mushy tomato sauce and unidentified meat; stuffed cabbage may have been your favorite recipe or your worst enemy. Either way it was never the prettiest looking dish. But often times the old family favorites have not lasted throughout the years because of their plate appeal. They are there to remind us of simpler times and family stories. True comfort food is not meant to be stylish.

One thing is for certain for stuffed cabbage, whether you loved it or were emotionally scarred by it, once you grow up, no one ever remembers how to make it. Most likely because there’s really no one complete recipe. Every family has there own way of doing things, thus becoming their legacy.

Nineteen years ago today, my mother’s mother, Grandma Meade passed away. The mother of nine children and grandmother of too many to remember, she often cooked in large quantity to feed the masses. I have a vague recollection of her stuffed cabbage, but not enough to recreate it on my own. I can see the wet pale cabbage leaves in my mind covered in a thin red sauce, but that is all. The memory of flavor is gone.

Dad has never made stuffed cabbage and so we set on to figure it out. With a quick web search and good amount of “winging it” we managed to create something that hopefully would have passed muster in my grandmother’s kitchen.

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients:
1 large head of cabbage
1 large can or jar of sauerkraut
2 lbs. of ground beef
1 cup cooked long grain rice
1 egg
½ large onion, finely chopped
½ green pepper, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ large tomato, diced
1 ½ cup tomato sauce
¼ cup breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon of ground black pepper
Hungarian paprika, salt and pepper to taste

1. Place entire head of cabbage in a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil until the outer leaves start to loosen.

2. Peel off the outer leaves from the cabbage with a pair of tongs and continue to boil until the next layer of leaves softens. Repeat until all leaves are removed and set aside.

3. Place ground beef, rice, salt, paprika, pepper, bread crumbs, ½ cup of the tomato sauce and egg in a large mixing bowl and combine well. Set aside.

4. Place onion, garlic, and green pepper in a small pan and sauté with a little olive oil until onion is soft.

5. Add onion mixture to the beef mixture and mix well.

6. Preheat the oven 325°. Spread the sauerkraut into the bottom of a 9” x 13” metal baking pan.

7. Starting with the largest cabbage leaves, begin by cutting the stalk out of the center, creating a V-shape. Place about a handful of meat mixture on one end a cabbage leaf and roll around the center, tucking the sides as you go. Place the cabbage roll, seam down on top of the bed of sauerkraut.

8. Repeat until all leaves and meat have been used.

9. Sprinkle chopped tomatoes on top of the rolls and spread a thin layer of tomato sauce over all.

10. Cover tightly with foil and bake for two hours or until a meat thermometer reads at least 180° internal temperature.

Tip: Consider placing a cookie sheet under the pan in the oven in case juice bubble over.



The Verdict:
For our first go of it, Dad and I agreed that it came out pretty well. We had to fiddle with the baking times a bit since one of the recipes we were reading cooked all the cabbage rolls on the stove top for three hours and we preferred to cook it in the oven. It’s hard to say what the difference would have been the other way around.

Grandma’s cabbage rolls were always soft enough to cut with a fork. Our’s were a little firmer and you needed a knife to slice them in half. I wouldn’t want them too mushy, so maybe we just need to boil the cabbage leaves a little longer. Next time I think we’d also use a little less rice but a little more onion, garlic, salt and pepper. The meat could have used some more kick.

I'd also like to try varying up the meat mixture. One recipe we referenced called for a split between ground beef and ground pork, but beef was all we happened to have on hand. Some recipes also use a third meat, like veal or ground lamb.

With tons of leftovers, I brought it home to the husband who enjoyed his first stuffed cabbage actually made with cabbage. The sauerkraut definitely helps everything stay moist and enhances the flavor. (Perhaps this is why his father, always chose to ditch the cabbage all together and make his "stuffed" cabbage with a big pot of sauerkraut.)

Any way you make it, you’re sure to be serving up platefuls of family memories.

Grandma Meade and (just a few of) her grandchildren