Recipe: Stuffed cabbage in a pot

Name: Stuffed cabbage in a pot
Prep time: 60 min
Cook time: 120 min
Total time: 180 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: What you need:1. To have an old dad who, in retirement, left the big city to settle in the countryside to watch his vegetables grow.; 2. To find a neighbor of this dad who had her husband grow cabbage seedlings to make sauerkraut at Christmas (?). Take this husband with a « green thumb » who sows everything and gives his seedlings, which have become too numerous, to your dad, who is curious and will replant them in his vegetable garden.; 3. You get the basic ingredient, a huge cabbage weighing 6.5 lb (3 kg), whose variety you don't know, but which you know is mild because you've tasted it raw.; 1 large green cabbage weighing 3.25 lb (1.5 kg) (I know, yours will look ridiculous next to mine!); 3.5 oz (100 g) of sausage meat; 3.5 oz (100 g) of smoked bacon; 10.5 oz (300 g) of cooked salt pork (in winter, from your butcher/charcuterie, at least from mine); 1.75 oz (50 g) of grated Gruyère; 7 oz (200 g) of rice cooked in water (prepared the day before, for example); 1 egg; 1 tablet of bouillon concentrate (organic, because I don't want you to catch Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, one can never be too careful with the agri-food industry...); 1.1 qt (1 liter) of hot water; 1 garlic clove; 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley; Salt and pepper

By patriciadebx 5/5 (3 reviews)

Prep 60 min

Cook 120 min

Total 3h

Servings 6 serv.

The tricky part with stuffed cabbage is overcooking it and it becomes mushy, or not cooking it enough and the leaves stay fibrous. Count on 2 hours at a gentle simmer, no more. You save time by preparing the filling the day before. Result: a family dish that feeds 6 people with 3 kg of cabbage, rice, and deli meat.

Ingredients for 6 servings

Adjust for

servings

What you need:

1. To have an old dad who, in retirement, left the big city to settle in the countryside to watch his vegetables grow.
2. To find a neighbor of this dad who had her husband grow cabbage seedlings to make sauerkraut at Christmas (?). Take this husband with a « green thumb » who sows everything and gives his seedlings, which have become too numerous, to your dad, who is curious and will replant them in his vegetable garden.
3. You get the basic ingredient, a huge cabbage weighing 6.5 lb (3 kg), whose variety you don't know, but which you know is mild because you've tasted it raw.
1 large green cabbage weighing 3.25 lb (1.5 kg) (I know, yours will look ridiculous next to mine!)
3.5 oz (100 g) of sausage meat
3.5 oz (100 g) of smoked bacon
10.5 oz (300 g) of cooked salt pork (in winter, from your butcher/charcuterie, at least from mine)
1.75 oz (50 g) of grated Gruyère
7 oz (200 g) of rice cooked in water (prepared the day before, for example)
1 egg
1 tablet of bouillon concentrate (organic, because I don't want you to catch Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, one can never be too careful with the agri-food industry...)
1.1 qt (1 liter) of hot water
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

Step-by-step directions

1 Cut off the cabbage core close to the leaves, remove any damaged leaves. Wash the cabbage. Bring water to a boil in a pot large enough to hold the cabbage. Salt it and blanch the cabbage for 15 minutes at a gentle simmer. Drain it by pressing it to remove the water. I placed it right in the large sink basin.

2 Prepare the filling: peel and finely chop the garlic. Chop the salt pork and bacon with a knife, as finely as possible. Crumble the sausage meat. Mix everything in a bowl, add the rice, grated cheese, and chopped parsley. Bind everything with the egg. Season with salt and pepper and mix again.

3 Carefully separate the leaves of the cabbage (I left mine in the sink basin to stuff it), all the way to the heart. Put a tablespoon of filling in the center and distribute another tablespoon of filling to each row of leaves until you've used it all. Tie the cabbage crosswise by knotting the string at the top so you can easily remove it from its cooking pot.

4 Prepare the broth by dissolving the bouillon tablet in hot water. Place the cabbage in the pot and cover with the broth. Bring to a boil over high heat.

5 Cover the pot and let it cook for 2 hours at a gentle simmer.

6 When serving, remove the cabbage using the string. Take a photo of it before cutting it into slices, otherwise no one will believe you made it yourself.

Chef Patrick's Comment

This gives us 2 stuffed cabbage recipes since I've already published a time-honored recipe that is always prepared by Grandma Bernadette in Fontanges.
You'll notice that in ours, we wait to have pot-au-feu broth so we can give maximum flavor to the cabbage.
Enjoy your meal!