Cabbage Patch

[gbrown]

For any, that love cabbage, as I do.

1 to 1 1/2 # ground meat. I use ground chuck roasts I grind myself. Probably 85 to 90 % lean.
About 1/2 large head cabbage (3-4 cups?)
1 tbsp steak seasoning, cajun seasoning, whatever your favorite blend is.
1 tbsp garlic powder. Fresh or dried pods are good, too. Too much garlic!!!! No such animal.
1 can Ranch Style beans, or whatever you like best.
1/2 fresh onion--chopped medium
8 oz Velveeta type cheese. I use Kroger "Nice & Cheesy".

Heat oven to 350
Put pan on to boil cabbage
Cook ground meat, break up into crumbs.
Add onions, cook till almost clear.
Add seasoning.
Add beans, if too dry, add 1/2 can water
While meat is cooking, do the following:
Chop cabbage into 1/2 or 3/4 or 1 inch pieces/boil
Chop onions
Cube cheese into 1/2 pieces
Drain cabbage
Take a container large enough to hold 4 quarts and put meat, bean, onion mixture in and add cabbage. Mix thoroughly. Add cheese. I add about 1/4 cup at a time, but you can add it all and mix, again thoroughly. It's all going to melt, bubble and mix, anyway. Pour into casserole and place in oven for 35 minutes, uncovered. The top of the cabbage may brown/blacken, but its all good. Let sit to cool a little and then enjoy. For heat, I'm talking my serving, add cayenne (red) pepper, tabasco, whatever, or (favorite) thin sliced fresh jalapeno. An old family favorite I'm happy to share.

[Moonie]

I love cabbage and this sounds amazing, the wife however can't even stand the smell of it cooking.

Perhaps she will go out of town some day.

[bowfin]

We are going to try this one. My wife voted in favor of it while I was reading the recipe out loud.

Thanks a bunch, we were getting in a rut.

[Dale in Louisiana]

My cabbage recipe (From the blog (http://mostlycajun.com/wordpress/?p=509))

Picture this: Late in the day. You’ve been doing important things that must be done, and you’re expecting hungry family of four to be a the dinner table in an hour and a half. No problem, right? Pick up the phone and order pizza. Open the freezer and haul out TV dinners. Nope! not if you’re a frugal Cajun.

You know that somewhere you have a good chunk of sausage. There’s the basis of a good meal.

The ingredients:

a half-pound of good sausage. You can use LESS if money’s tight, or MORE if you’re RICH Cajun.

I am particularly blessed in southwest Louisiana to have access to several great sausage makers. Rabideaux, up the road near the town of Iowa(!) Louisiana has gotten popular enough to where I can by their stuff at the local markets. Hell, we export it to TEXAS! Plus, there’re several others, equally as good: Abe’s Cajun Market, B&O Cajun Kitchen, The Sausage Link… You can’t walk down the road here without finding a good, spicey, delicious smoked sausage. This is the result of Cajun and German heritage in this part of the country.

If you can’t get Cajun sausage, then go find yourself a good ethnic meat market, Czech, Bohemian, Polish, German. Those folks make good sausage too. What you want is spicy and well-smoked. The sausage in this recipe is about flavor. You’re gonna take bland ingredients and turn them into something that will stand by itself as a memorable meal.

An onion. You need an onion the size of a fist or so. Chop it up into 1/4 dice. If you have a green onion (scallion) chop that up too. Parsley? If you want. Go ahead!

Cabbage. One head. If its real big, you might only need half of it. Discard the dirty/dry outer leaves. cut the head into quarters and then from each quarter, cut the “heart” out. This heart, eaten raw, is a crisp, tangy treat that I get from cooking cabbage. When I was a kid, if Mom was cooking cabbage, I always hung around to get a chunk of the cabbage heart for a snack.

Wait! You’re telling me that cabbage is a Cajun ingredient? Since when? Well, since every country Cajun I knew of planted cabbage in a fall or spring garden. All you had to do was walk out there and pick one. Additionally, they could be harvested and kept for weeks in a cool dry place.

Salt

Black pepper

Red pepper.

That’s it! What? Six ingredients?

The procedure:

Slice the sausage up. 3/8″ slices work. You may want to do bigger. It’s up to you. The thinner slices release their flavor a bit more readily, and the small slices mean that a half-pound of sausage gets spread onto everybody’s plates somewhat equally.

Chop the onion(s). I own and use a chef’s knife. I keep it sharp. I use it almost every time I cook. I don’t own a food processor. But I won’ hold it against you if you use a food processor. By whatever means, reduce the whole onion of either a 1/4″ dice or a pile of thin slices. Just break the dang thing up so somebody doesn’t end up with a whole freakin’ onion on their plate. If you’re using a green onion for the color and flavor, chop it up, too. You might want to reserve a bit of the green onion tops to allow your feeders to sprinkle on top of their portions at time of serving as a garnish and a different taste and texture.

Take your quartered and cored cabbage and chop it up coarsely. I generally end up with something in the one inch square range.

Take a heavy pot in the four or five quart range (I use cast iron. You should, too, but if not, use something with a heavy bottom) and heat it on the stove over medium to high heat. Throw in the cut up sausage and stir it around a bit until it’s releasing oil and smelling wonderful. You want it to start browning. Kitchen’s starting to smell good, huh? Well, just wait. When the sausage is sizzling and browning, dump in your onions. Stir them around in that sausage grease with the sausage until the onion is translucent. You can let it brown a little, too. Now it should REALLY smell good.

(Obligatory mommy-state note: If your sausage is really fatty and releases an alarming amount of grease during the browning process, you can skim some off before adding the onion. I never did.)

Okay. You’ve got a pot full of browned sausage and onion. You can go two ways with that right now, but since you’ve got a big pile of cut up cabbage, I won’t talk about the other one. (NOTE: The linked article on my blog talks about doing this with potatoes) We’ll dump in the cabbage. If you’re using a four quart pot and you used a medium head of cabbage, you may be alarmed to note that your pot is FULL. Don’t you sweat. The cabbage will. It will sweat and release its moisture and begin to cook down. This is what you want to happen. Stir the pot occasionally from the bottom to the top, turning the mixture over. You might want to add a little water so that the steam will help accelerate the cabbage wilting. Adding a bit of salt at the beginning of the cabbage phase will also help the cabbage cook down.

After the cabbage has cooked down and your pot is a seething mass, turn the heat down, stir occasionally, and salt and pepper to taste. And I **DO** mean “taste”. Scoop a spoonful of the cabbage and its juice into a metal spoon and let it cool a bit then slip it into you mouth. Chew a bit. Walk around a minute and let the pepper work before you add more. You can’t be sure how much the spiciness of the sausage will transmit into the cabbage, so go light on the salt and pepper until just before serving. Continue to cook and stir.

If you don’t stir, the cabbage at the bottom of the pot may burn. Let me tell you, as pleasant as the smell of browning sausage and onion may be, the smell of burnt cabbage is NOT. So stir. You may have to add a little more water as you continue to cook. You don’t want the liquid standing on the top of the cabbage, you want to have cabbage all the way to the surface, with wet bubbles popping through it. But that means you have to keep stirring pretty often.

What you’re looking for in your cooking is for the thickest ribs in your cabbage chunks to be cooked all the way through to tenderness. Some of the tender parts of the cabbage will break down completely, giving this dish a rich thickness.

You’re ready to serve. Yep! a one-dish meal! If you want something that is a bit extra and completely authentic, serve a small dish of sweet pickles with it. That adds a wonderful contrast to the cabbage and sausage. A good Cajun mom or grandmother always had her own canned pickles in the pantry for just this occasion, and 99% of them were some variety of sweet pickle or relish. And of course, the Cajun table would have one or more bottles of hot sauce and pickled peppers to allow the diner to heat up his plate to his own tastes.

[gbrown]

My cabbage recipe

+1 on that one. The potato one you talk about sounds similar to a potato and sausage recipe I saw on Justin Wilson's cooking show many years ago. Loved his humor and his recipes. He added Tabasco, Worchester and shredded cheese to his. Thanks for reminding me of it. I'll have to make it, as well as yours, in the near future.

[Dark Helmet]

put a sliced onion in the bottom of your pot-fools flies too!

[pmeisel]

Fine recipe Dale. My dad used to do something similar but not quite the same. I haven't and now I will remedy that real soon.