I’ve been craving cabbage rolls for days so I made them yesterday but I’m eating them today. They always taste better the next day so I like to make them the day before. This time the cabbage was a little small so it made twenty little bundles of goodness filled with ground sirloin, rice, tomato, and mushrooms. The mushrooms are optional but I think they add a nice extra flavor. And I like to use different liquids to pour over the rolls for baking. This time I used some tomato but other times I just use water from boiling the cabbage. I’ve even topped them with sauerkraut and its juice for baking and they were great.
When my dad made these we always had them with sour cream so today I browned them in a little olive oil (my dad used butter) and had them with reduced fat sour cream and yummmmm!!!! I remember my mother used to make cabbage rolls (golabki) and she even liked them cold – just stick one on a fork and there’s your snack. Polish cabbage rolls is one of my most viewed videos – I never expected that. Here’s the recipe.
For dessert I made my apple pie bars.
It’s less work than apple pie but just as tasty, made with 2 pounds of Granny Smith apples and my healthier and easier oil crust. It’s the same crust I use for all my pies, including chicken pot pie. Ooooh, chicken pot pie sounds so good – I may have to make it tomorrow. Back to my apple pie bars. There’s an ongoing debate in this house about whether these are apple pie bars or a square apple pie. I don’t care what we call it as long as we get to eat it. Here’s the recipe and that’s what I cooked today. …just sharing… – Jenny Jones
I always wondered if cabbage rolls made with red cabbage would turn out and now I can report on my experiment. I already knew from eating lots of cabbage salads that red cabbage is a little tougher than the green one. That turned out to be true even when the leaves are softened for cabbage rolls. I boiled the whole head of red cabbage for ten minutes, just like I do the green one for my cabbage rolls. The leaves didn’t seem soft enough so I put them back in for another few minutes and they seemed a little softer. I then proceeded as usual, cutting off the thick spine to make them easy to roll.
The main difference occured when rolling. I made both green and red ones so I could really compare and the green leaves rolled up beautifully and didn’t tear or break. But some of the red ones tended to break and crack so I had to patch the crack and then roll up my golabki. So the red leaves were a little harder to work with but I must say they do look good.
And the taste? Wonderful, just like the green ones. So my summary is… if you are making cabbage rolls for the first time, stick with the green cabbage. The soft leaves will be easier to roll and you will be confident in making them again. If you make them in red, just be prepared for a little extra work if they tear but that can happen with green leaves too. When it happens, you remove the filling, lay an extra piece of a cabbage leaf over the tear, fully covering and overlapping the tear, then add your filling and roll it up.
Cabbage rolls made with red cabbage make a beautiful presentation and once they are cooked, the red rolls are just as tender as the green ones. So there is my report. I will definitely make red cabbage rolls again if only for the reaction I’m sure to get when I put them on the table.
My Polish cabbage rolls recipe has been very popular and I’m thrilled with the number of people who have made and love them. Over 1/4 million people (update February 2021 – over 15 million!) If you haven’t made stuffed cabbage yet, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
I’ve decided to make my fantastic cabbage rolls for my next video. It’s one of my best dinner recipes which I learned from my dad who made this traditional Polish dish all the time. My favorite way to serve them is browned in a little olive oil with a dollop of sour cream on the side. My Polish cabbage rolls video should be up in the next couple of weeks. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
