Stuffed cabbage-A Polish casser-roll

mmm-yoso!!! is the food blog.  Kirk and ed (from Yuma) and Cathy take turns writing about what, where, how and sometimes why and when they eat.  That's just what we do.   

Hi.  It's Friday and I'm hungry.  Cabbage is 35 cents a pound at Henry's and 15% lean ground beef was on sale for  $3.49/pound.  Add some cooked rice, onion, a bit of bacon and some sort of sauce and you have a dish that is made around the world and be able to feed two people for about $5.

 

Yes, many different cultures stuff cabbage leaves with a mixture of meat, eggs, onion and a starch. It is yet another type of peasant cuisine, simply made.  The rolls are baked, simmered or steamed- on top of the stove, in a crockpot or in the oven, basically cooking with the steam created by the rolls and then served with cuisine-specific sauces.

 

In Norwegian countries, the rolls are usually baked and topped with a sweet sauce, lingonberry based, or simply honey.  In Europe, the rolls are coked on a stove top (or nowadays, in a crock pot) and the sauce is tomato based and in Lebanon, the same basic rolls are steamed and served with yogurt.

 

The rolls are called golabki (ga-whump-key)(there is a thingy underneath the "L" that makes the pronunciation different) in Polish (the word  means "little pigeons").

 

Making a savory filling is essential.

 

Cook two slices of chopped bacon in a small pan.  Don't drain.

 

 

In the bacon grease, cook 1/2 of a chopped onion.

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, put a cored head of cabbage into a pot of boiling water with vinegar added to it (I put in about 1/4 cup)  This gives a sort of saurkraut flavor.

 

If the water does not cover the head, rotate the cabbage in the water as it gets back to boiling.  You want to soften the cabbage leaves.

 

Remove from the water and drain.  Let cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lightly mix about 1 cup cooked rice, the cooked bacon pieces, the cooked onion, two raw eggs (did you see? I got a double yolked one!) and about 3/4 pound of meat. (Some people use a mix of ground pork and ground beef).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put about 3 Tablespoonfuls into the larger outer leaf halves (cut away that tough center rib of each leaf).

 

Roll so that the meat is tucked in and place seam side down into a casserole dish.  Stack until you use up all the meat.  I line the bottom of the dish with cabbage leaves. If I have extra cabbage, I layer it on top.  You never can have too much cabbage...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top with undiluted canned, tomato soup.

 

Cover with foil and bake at 350 for one hour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golabki (Polish cabbage rolls)

Parboil one head of cored cabbage in boiling water that has had vinegar added.  Drain and let cool.

 

Cook 2 slices chopped bacon until crisp, remove bacon and cook 1/2 small onion.  

 

Mix one Cup cooked rice, the cooked onion and cooked bacon with 3/4 lb raw meat and two raw eggs.

Peel cabbage leaves, remove tough spine of leaves.  Fill each leaf sparing ly with meat mixture, roll and stack the small filled leaves.

 

Cover rolls with tomato soup (can add some catsup if you need just a little more liquid or flavor) and cover tightly with foil.  Bake at 350 for 60 minutes.

 

 

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Comments

[ScottyB]

Yum, my mom used to make almost the same recipe when I was a kid. is that supposed to be 1/4 cup vinegar in the main body of the post? Also, Cathy, I just read the whole set of comments for your Chicken and Dumplings post and I'm sorry you had to go through that. I really enjoy your posts, as well as this entire blog.

[Cathy]

I fixed it- thanks and welcome, Scotty. You use vinegar to give the cabbage more of a kraut flavor. Thanks for the kind words. The blog is just a fun thing for all of us to do. We each lead various "other" lives and this writing about what we eat is a way of thinking differently. I am moving forward from those hurtful comments. :)

[ScottyB]

Great. Glad to hear you're moving on. I'm a software developer and blogging is also my way of doing something different and indulging my culinary side.

[Lori]

OMG!!! I seriously just bought cabbage and ground beef at the store two hours before I read this post, we must be on the same wavelength. :) I was planning to make my mom's version, which is similar. Yours looks yummy though! Never tried it with bacon.

[Carol]

We love stuffed cabbage! I like your version, nice and simple. My MIL makes a Croatian version (Sarma or Sardama) where the filling is a mix of ground beef/port and rice. Then it's boiled for a couple of hours in a tomato base sauce with Sauerkraut. The Mister always whips up a batch of garlic mash potatoes with it. I'll have to learn how to make this one day.

[cathy]

Right, Scotty, it's just a blog. We have fun here. Nobody can bully me. I can delete them!

Hi, Lori! Great minds... There are lots of variations I did not list- instead of rice, you can put in oatmeal or bulghur or chopped mushrooms or even tofu. The bacon and then onions is what my mom does for just about everything- add to the meat for the golabki, add to the kraut for kapusta or fry the perogis in it...

You know, I started to write about all the variations, holubki in Lithuania and the sarma in Croatia...then I stopped. It's very simple and you probably could just layer the cabbage and meat...like a lasgne...or my 'easy (read: lazy) enchilada...It's just getting the flavors to meld...and I so love cabbage in every form.

[Amy]

In high school, my best friend's mom (who was of Polish American extraction) made this dish with tomato sauce to which she'd added a little sugar and cornstarch, as well as some kind of spice (mace?) So, the tomato soup is a brilliant shortcut. I'm surprised she didn't do that instead?

[_ts of [eatingclub] vancouver]

I have a wekaness for cabbage rolls!!!

[_ts of [eatingclub] vancouver]

I mean "WEAKNESS", of course, not wekaness. ;)

[stephen]

Hi Cathy. Thanks for the post. My grandma used to make them, and I always thought they were really hard to make. This sounds nice and easy.
I also have to say, I am absolutely shocked by the amount of abuse that was heaped on you regarding your chicken and dumpling post. I tried making them from scratch once and it was a disaster. This sounds really easy. I have been reading this blog for a couple years now, and I have learned a lot from you, ed in yuma, and Kirk. Keep posting, please.

[cathy]

Hi Amy...some things are so simple to add...I grew up with onion powder, garlic powder and celery salt as our "spice rack", to make things even more 'exotic'.

Hi, ts- I understand your weakness -and fragility-after eating all that prime rib... Wonderful blog.

Hey, Stephen- The most difficult thing about making the rolls is uniformity...since the cabbage leaves get smaller, the sizes and amount of filling will vary, and the technique for filling and rolling changes with each leaf. It is just good food.
Thanks for the kind words. We do just blog and try to be informative and sometimes amusing. Really, nobody deserves to be called names. Especially not for talking about how and what they eat.

[rooney]

My word of advice to everyone reading this post whose Mom makes cabbage rolls is get the recipe! My father is Polish, mom a WASP, but she loved making cabbage rolls. Unfortunately, her memory is gone and I don't know how she made her sauce. There are so many of her recipes that are now lost. Don't let another day go by without asking for family recipes.

[ed (from Yuma)]

Great stuff (pun intended?). I grew up eating cabbage rolls and stuffed peppers.

When I lived in SD, I used to get to-die-for cabbage rolls at The Sherlock Holmes on Garnet, perhaps the most unfortunately named Russian Restaurant ever. Served with a dollop of sour cream and so savory and saucy and cabbagey and good.

Never tried to make them myself, but with this post as inspiration . . .

[Cathy]

Very true, rooney. Thanks for telling everyone. Most recipes are not written...and almost never measured.

It is not that difficult, ed. Really the rolling technique is the toughest part. You can alter things to your taste. I think sour cream on the side sounds good.

[Cat]

oOOooo I had this for the first time this past December at my husbands relatives house. Yummmmy. I will definately try making this. She added cheese when she baked hers.

[Cathy]

Hello and Welcome to the commenting side of the blog, Cat. I never have had stuffed cabbage with cheese.I will try that on half a batch next time. I like your blog.

[Anna]

"The rolls are called golabki (ga-whump-key)(there is a thingy underneath the "L" that makes the pronunciation different) in Polish (the word means "little pigeons")."

The 'thingy' (accent) is under the A. The L has a line through it.

Gołąbki

[Cathy]

Thanks Anna. When I wrote this almost four years ago, I asked my mom and didn't research further. Welcome to the commenting side of our blog.