While I enjoy Polish heritage, this is a dish that I never had as a child. Weird. It wasn’t until I started to participate in office potlucks to first give this a shot. Those were generally terrible. I recently made this for the annual fishing trip, and was able to come-up with a version that is truly awesome. Also, it’s one of the cheapest ways to feed dinner to your family. Bonus!
Um, yeah, this is going to be a big meal
Gołąbki (pronounced, GWUMP-key)
Serves 5-6 Polacks; probably more Italians, Irish, or Cambodians
Ingredients
- 1* Whole Head of Green Cabbage
- 1 Large Onion, chopped
- 2 Tbs Butter
- 1 lb Ground Beef
- 1/2 lb Ground Pork
- 1 1/2 Cups Cooked Rice
- 1 tsp Garlic, minced
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
- 1 Cup Beef Stock
- Sour Cream
Summary
- Cook rice and onions separately – let cool
- Blanch the cabbage
- Mix-together filling
- Wrap filling in cabbage leaves
- Bake
Instructions
- Remove the core from the cabbage: use a sharp/thin knife to cut-out a pyramid from the bottom of the cabbage. Place the whole head into a large/huge pot of salted boiling water. Boil for ~3 minutes and remove. Use tongs to remove the leaves – they should be soft. If not soft, put the cabbage back into the pot for a minute or two until you can peel the leaves. You need whole leaves, so don’t fuck it up. I pull the leaves off the head while the cabbage is floating in the water – seems easier.
Insert the knife at an angle, rotate it around until you’ve cut-out the core
- For each cabbage leaf, use a paring knife to trim the center stalk so it’s not so tough. Don’t remove the stalk entirely, simply thin it. You’ll understand once you start doing.
Left: there’s the vein. Right: there it is again – removed.
- Chop-up the remaining cabbage.
- Add chopped cabbage to the bottom of a 9×13″ baking dish – about 1.5″ high of chopped cabbage is good – this will be a bed for the cabbage rolls, and will be delicious later.
- Cook the onion in the butter until softened and slightly browned. Set aside to cool.
- Cook the rice per rice instructions and set aside to cool. You can cook the rice an onions earlier – since they need to cool off anyway…
- Mix the beef, pork, onions, rice, garlic, and salt & pepper in a bowl. Don’t over-mix – that will make the filling tough. We want tender filling, dammit!
- Put 1/2 cup filling in a cabbage leaf, and wrap like a Polish burrito: Left, right, then roll-up from the bottom. Do this 17 more times. Place each roll, seam-side down, in the baking dish. If you remember 4th grade Math, we’re going for 3 columns of 6 rolls each (3×6=18). Hooray!
- Note: instead of exactly 1/2 cup of filling, you really need 1/18th of the filling per cabbage roll. Good luck!
Fold-in the left side, fold-in the right side, roll-up from the bottom. Repeat.
- Pour beef stock over cabbage rolls, cover, and bake in a 350 degree oven for 75 minutes. You’re cooking this until the filling is cooked and the cabbage is tender – most of the green should have been cooked-out and it’ll look like a drab pan of Polish food – in a good way.
See how the green has been cooked-out? This is correct.
- Serve with a dollop of sour cream (Polacks put sour cream on everything).
- Oh, that’s good…
Recipe Notes
- Will one head of cabbage be enough? >> Maybe. I like the “pretty” leaves that are toward the outside of the cabbage, so I use two heads. It’s possible that one head will be enough, but cabbage is cheap and I’m made of money…
- What kind of rice should I use? >> I use Uncle Ben’s rice – something simple and instant will be good. We’re using the rice as a filling – doesn’t matter what kind. I guess you can even use left-over Chinese food rice; YOU, not me.
- No tomatoes? I’ve seen this with tomato sauce on top >> Yes, me too. Some recipes call for pouring tomato soup on the top – seems weird. My guess is there are plenty of versions of “stuffed cabbage” out there, and the tomato version is one of them. Give this a try – if you need tomato soup next time, so be it.
Cook Like a Badass 