[Kitchen Alchemy] Cabbage Roll

Rice covered in rich tomato sauce. Oh joy.

Okay, listen up wanna-be chefs, or people who just want to learn how to cook to survive the urban life, today I'll be sharing you a recipe that I consider "rustic". Heck, one of my older brothers consider it as a comfort food, and I have to agree with him on that. But such foods require quite some effort, and this cabbage roll recipe is no exception.

So what's a cabbage roll? Simply put, it's prepared ground meat wrapped in a cabbage leaf and cooked in tomato sauce. Can't get any simpler than that. I was told our mother used to cook this even before I was born (I learned how to cook for the sole reason I consider it as a total necessity in life), and after several years of making it (trial and error, total failure, you name it), I can claim this recipe as my own, or for my family.

Let's get started, shall we? Then wash your hands, ready your name, and time to put your head onto the chopping block after the break. So to speak.

Ingredients

• 1/2 kg ground meat (you can mix 1/4 kg ground beef and 1/4 ground pork)
• 1 whole cabbage head
• onions
• garlic
• ground pepper
• tomato sauce
• salt/soy sauce
• herbs (totally optional)

Not shown: Manly tears (effing onions!)

1) Place your ground meat in a mixing bowl and let it sit for awhile. Roughly chop your onions, and pound and slice your garlic. Your call if you want to use either white or red onion; the red onion imparts a stronger flavor (I only used white onions here because it was readily available in the kitchen). Also, I haven't experimented using ground chicken (for you health buffs and kosher- or halal- conscious people), so you're on your own there.

Don't play with your food, they said.

2) Add the onions and garlic to the ground meat. Also add the ground pepper at this point. Now, it's up to you whether to use salt or soy sauce; I'm just biased to using soy sauce because it mixes better than just dashing salt over the meat. But as I've said, your call (and maybe you're better at mixing).

Note: If you feel that this meat mixture alone is a little bit...well, loose, you can either crack a whole egg or use cornstarch/all purpose flour as binding agent, then mix well. Be careful with flour or cornstarch though, you just want the meat to be a bit clumpy, not dry and all that.

There's a secret on how to achieve this, but I won't tell. Experience is a better teacher.

3) Let your ground meat mixture rest, cover and let it set in a refrigerator for about half an hour. When it's time to cook, take out your cabbage head, and peel individual leaves (whole), as shown.

Not too wilty, not too...y'know.

4) So you might be thinking: you roll the meat into the leaf just like that? Well, a long time ago, yes. And the result was anything but a whole cabbage roll. I was taught by my older sister a technique she used when she was the one cooking cabbage roll for the family then: Boil the leaves a bit in hot water to make it flexible so it won't break during rolling. About 3 minutes into the hot water should be enough.

Salad, anyone?

4) So the leaves are flimsy yet firm, so we're ready to start rolling, right? Not so fast. YOU can handle and roll hot cabbage leaves? Didn't think so. A good wash with tap water should do the trick before we start. And oh....

All white and all.

5) You do remember that I didn't use the whole cabbage head, right? Well, since it's boring for just the cabbage roll to cook on its own, I opt to use a bit of shredded cabbage to go along with it. A quarter of the remaining head should do the trick. So we just...

Voila.

6) Shred the quarter head like so. Save the remaining for making coleslaw or something else.

Hulk green. Ruh-roh....

7) Avengers assemble! Get a plate, and lay down your blanched cabbage leaf like so...

Just enough meat. 

8) Put a dollop of ground meat mixture onto the leaf...

Presto!

9) There's a good technique for this: Tuck the sides of the leaf towards the meat, then roll from the bottom up.

Lonely out there.

10) Then place your cabbage roll into a pot. As you can see, the shredded cabbage added first, then the roll. I add a bit of water into the pot so that the shredded leaves won't burn when it cooks later.

Note: Usually the cabbage roll is secured with a couple of toothpicks to prevent it from unwrapping during cooking. But since I've done this dish many times, I'm confident that mine won't. So I suggest to the newbies out there to secure your first-time cabbage rolls with toothpicks.

Ain't we got a crowd 'ere.

11) This is almost complete. I used the remaining ground meat mixture as mini-meatballs here. Bonus: that meat mixture I gave earlier? You can use it to make your own home-style hamburger patties with it. Believe me.

Let's paint the town red.

12) Now before we go blasting it, add a whole pack of tomato sauce and cover the cabbage roll and everything else. Cover, and let it boil/stew/whatever for about 45 minutes, since it's ground meat it should cook quickly and all.

Mamma mia! Whoops, wrong recipe....

13) This one's just after 30 minutes of boiling. What I do is let it boil for another 10 minutes or so, uncovered, and taste the sauce. You can either add pepper, or if you feel like it, a few bit of herbs (dried basil works here). If the sauce is too sour or what, now's the time to fix it.

14) After another 10 minutes (or whatever time your call) all that's left to do now is grab a plate, scoop some rice, and ladle it over with cabbage rolls and the sauce. Oh yum.