What? EIGHT Cabbages? What Am I Going to Do with EIGHT Cabbages?! Make Stuffed Cabbage of Course! – Recipe
The garden has been erm, productive this year.
To say the least.
Yes, you see EIGHT cabbages. The smallest one weighed 5.6 pounds.
IT IS A LOT OF CABBAGE!
I had mentioned that I wanted to try sauerkraut this year so he bought me a crock.
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A BIG crock.
It holds a lot of cabbage.
I cut up two heads of cabbage, one was 7.6 lbs, one was 8.4 lbs.
It went into the crock with salt.
Some cabbage leaves, the crock weights and some brine. I covered it and put water in the water seal.
It sat upstairs and burped for a couple of days and it now resides in the basement where it will do so for several more days until we can see if it does indeed turn into sauerkraut.
Keep your fingers crossed.
2 cabbages down, 6 to go.
I used half of one cabbage to make halushki, a Polish comfort food meal comprised of noodles and cabbage. The other half will go into some creamed cabbage I am making tonight to go with barbecued pork.
3 cabbages down, 5 to go.
Now we come to the stuffed cabbage or galumpki as my grandmother used to call it. I have no record of how she used to make it. I remember she used nutmeg in the sauce so I scoured the internet and I’ve come up with a mish-mash of what I found plus what little I remember of my grandmother’s recipe. I wanted to make enough to freeze for later since I had a little extra cabbage.
Stuffed Cabbage (for a crowd or to freeze)
3 LBS ground meat (I used a mix of venison and goat)
3 cups cooked rice (I used Jasmine rice)
1 egg
1 TBS garlic powder
1 onion, cut into small dice
1 TBS olive oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
large outer leaves of one large cabbage
For the Sauce:
2 quarts tomato juice (I used home canned)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
salt to taste
Heat the olive oil in a fry pan. Add the diced onion and cook until the onion is just slightly browned. Mix the ground meat, cooked rice, egg, garlic powder and onion in a large bowl. Set aside.
Carefully remove the outer leaves from the cabbage. Fill a large pot with salted water. Bring the water to a boil. Add a few leaves at a time to soften them up – immediately remove them to a sink or bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.
Take one leaf at a time and cut out the hard part of the core. This will make the cabbage easier to roll.
Take a handful of the meat mixture and place it at the bottom of the remaining cabbage.
Fold up the bottom, fold in the sides and roll up!
Do this until you have used up all of the meat mixture and cabbage leaves.
Make the sauce: add the tomato sauce, sugar and vinegar to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Taste and adjust with salt to taste.
For the cabbage rolls I was putting in the freezer I parceled out into containers and I added the sauce and they went into cold storage for later.
To serve for dinner:
Place a cabbage leaf or two on the bottom of a saucepan. Add the cabbage rolls you will be cooking – I used three – and pour in sauce and add another cabbage leaf on top. Cook until the sauce boils, lower the heat so it simmers. Cook for about half an hour.
To serve add the cabbage rolls to a bowl, add some sauce and top with chopped fresh parsley.
The sauce was a delightful mix of sweet and sour and perfect compliment to the cabbage and ground meat.
I served it with a fresh from the garden tomato and cantaloupe salad.
With some homemade Italian bread to soak up all that delicious sauce.
We both enjoyed it and while it was not exactly as I remembered my grandmother’s, it was pretty darn close!
4 cabbages down, 4 to go!
Any suggestions?
