Cabbage Rolls, A Cheap and Unexpected Appetizer

Remember the knife skills class at USC that I attended a little while back? They sent us home with a packet of recipes that we had made that night and the cabbage rolls stuck in my mind. I never really thought about cabbage as a food you'd cook, but sauteed cabbage with onions and seasonings was quite delicious.

Upon seeing cabbage for 39 cents a pound at Bi-Lo I knew that these cabbage rolls needed to happen, because cabbage is cheap, nutritious, and filling. It's the food trifecta, if you treat the cabbage right. Most people don't know how to make cabbage taste good, and that's why they think they don't like it. Raw cabbage can be be bitter and a bit spicy, with a rubbery texture, but cooking softens all of the rough edges of cabbage's less appealing attributes.

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Cabbage Rolls

Nutrient dense cabbage just needs a fun update to be more desirable. How about sautéing some filling and rolling it up in a cabbage leaf like an egg roll?

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Southern

Keyword cabbage

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 10 rolls

Author April

Ingredients

• 1 head of cabbage save large outer leaves, shred the inside*
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion diced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 1 cup vegetable or chicken stock
• toothpicks

Instructions

• Carefully remove the large, darker outer leaves from the cabbage head and set aside. You should have about ten good leaves per head, don’t worry if you tear them a little, it happens. Remove the hard core and roughly chop the remaining cabbage into small pieces.
• Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat.
• Saute the onions, shredded cabbage, caraway seeds, salt and pepper til onions are softened and translucent.
• Add 1 cup stock or broth to pan and increase heat to medium high. Stir in pan and saute until liquid is gone.
• One at a time, place a large outer leaf on a flat surface, spoon in about a ¼ to ½ cup of the shredded cabbage mixture and roll up eggroll style (demonstrated below in a cool GIF!). Secure with a toothpick.
• Let sit for five minutes so the heat from the cooked cabbage will soften the outer leaf. You can put the rolls under a lid or in an enclosed tupperware container to facilitate the steaming of the outer leaf for quicker softening.

*I halved the ingredients when I made this because I didn't want to be eating cabbage rolls for days on end since it would be just me eating them (and Patrick had one). These would be great for inexpensive, healthy and filling party appetizers!