If you miss your mom or grandmother when you hear the words cabbage rolls, you’re not alone. This humble dish has roots in numerous traditions and cultures, and it’s been modified around the edges by home cooks for decades, centuries even, to make a variation of cabbage rolls that is special to lots of households and communities.
Our version of the traditional cabbage rolls obtains most heavily from the Polish style, which hurts cabbage leaves enveloping a savory mixture of meat, pork, and rice. To make it Southern (since that’s what we do), we’ve spiced up the tomato sauce with a bit of Creole flavoring. We’ve likewise included body and taste to the tomato sauce with the holy trinity, a mixture of bell pepper, onion, and celery.
Discover how to make cabbage rolls, and thrill your family with this old-fashioned favorite at dinner.
Components for Cabbage Rolls
If you’ve made cabbage rolls before, you’ll recognize most everything on this component list. We’ve just added a couple of things to make it a bit more flavorful and unique.
Cabbage: You’ll need an entire head of cabbage. We like green cabbage because it turns tender and flexible after a fast boil.
Meat mixture: This dish uses a combination of lean hamburger, pork sausage, and long-grain white rice (that is cooked before it goes into the mix). Some dishes call for all of one meat or the other, but we like the 2 together.
Spices: The primary spice is Creole flavoring, which adds a little bit of heat to the final meal. You can leave it out if you want. No harm done.
Tomato sauce: Some traditional cabbage rolls dishes utilize tomato soup or even bottled tomato juice. We’re adding body and taste to ours with onion, bell pepper, celery, tomato paste, and crushed tomatoes. Beef stock includes volume so your cabbage rolls will have lots of sauce for sopping with bread.
One ingredient you won’t see in these cabbage rolls? Sugar. This is a welcome modification from lots of cabbage roll recipes, which require brown sugar. Overlooking the sugar makes these solidly savory.
How To Make Cabbage Rolls
The most complicated step in making homemade cabbage rolls is getting the leaves tender and prepped for rolling, and even that isn’t difficult. We’ve got pointers from our Test Kitchen listed below so that’s as easy as can be. Keep scrolling for the whole dish.
Step 1. Make tomato sauce: The tomato sauce is the home of this meal’s flavor. Certainly the pork, beef, and rice supply some meaty savoriness, but the genuine flavor is in the sauce. You’re going to develop up lots of flavor here by sautéing onion, bell pepper, and celery in a Dutch oven until tender. Include garlic, stock, tomato paste, tomatoes, and some of the Creole spices.
Boil cabbage: Once you have the core out of the cabbage (you need the water to be able to get deep into the head of cabbage leaves), you’ll desire to gently drop it into a stockpot filled with water. Simmer the cabbage leaves for about 5 minutes until the other leaves are softened.
Prepare the leaves for rolling: Bring the head of cabbage out of the water, and carefully pull off several large leaves. If the leaves are getting crunchier as you work your way down, pop the head back into the boiling water for a bit longer.
Make cabbage rolls filling: It might be easy to mix this step up a bit, so here’s a method to remember it: The meat is uncooked; the rice is prepared. In a bowl, combine the sausage, beef, and egg with the cooked rice, then include 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce.
Portion about 1/4 cup of the meat mix into the center of each of the cabbage leaves. Roll and fold the cabbage leaf around the filling like you would a burrito. Repeat nine more times for an overall of 10 cabbage rolls.
Step 6. Bake: Once all 10 cabbage rolls are rolled and ready, move them to a baking meal, and pour on the staying tomato sauce. Cover the dish with aluminum foil, and bake. The cabbage and filling will be so tender you can suffice with a spoon. Let the dish cool somewhat before serving.
How do you make cabbage soft for cabbage rolls?
You’ll boil a cored head of cabbage for about 5 minutes until the outer leaves are tender. You’ll have numerous remaining leaves, so you could use them in something like this Cabbage Casserole, where slightly tender leaves won’t mess up the final meal.
Tips for Making the very best Cabbage Rolls
Rolling cabbage rolls can be a little challenging, but once you do a couple of, you’ll have the hang of it. A few ideas from the Test Kitchen:
Cutting the V in the core side of the leaf is important, as it provides you a lot easier, flat surface to work with.
Use your fingers to form the filling into little logs, and position it in the center of the leaf, simply above the pointer of the V cut. Fold the cut (open) parts of the V up and over the filling, then tuck the 2 sides in, over the filling.
Next, use your fingers to carefully press the filling from the top to protect it inside the roll, and roll the whole thing over and under, developing a sealed roll, with the seam on the underside.
Where Did Cabbage Rolls Originate?
There are numerous variations of cabbage rolls, with two main sources being Poland and Ukraine. Each is a little different, and ours prefers the Polish version because the tastes are more tomato-forward and mouthwatering. Ukrainian cabbage rolls often have a sweet-sour flavor. However, similar to many home cooking favorites, that can change region to area or family to family.
How To Store Cabbage Rolls
Wrap the baking dish with leftovers, or put any leftovers in an airtight container with cover, and store in the fridge approximately 5 days. The rolls will be a bit softer after sitting and reheating, but they’re plenty tasty still. Reheat in the microwave, or if you have numerous servings, reheat in a 350 ° F oven, covered with aluminum foil, up until warmed through.
Can You Freeze Cabbage Rolls?
When the rolls are in a dish and topped with tomato sauce, slide the whole pan, covered with plastic wrap and aluminum, into the freezer. It might take longer to get the meat filling prepared and tender, however it’ll warm up nicely from frozen.