Head cabbage
4 lbs ground beef
4 eggs
Bread crumbs
Spices you’d use for meatloaf
Small can tomato sauce
Citric acid (sour salt)
Brown sugar
Diced small onion
Raisins
In a large covered pot with an inch of water, steam the cored cabbage so you can take apart the leaves. As you are doing that, make the meatloaf—use the eggs, bread crumbs, spices including garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, oregano, parsley, a little cream and ketchup, whatever you like.
Take the ground beef and wrap a small ball of it with a cabbage leaf. After placing some raisins and onion in the large pot, layer the cabbage rolls, add more onion and raisins, another layer of rolls and repeat until done.
Then add a can of tomato sauce and 8 oz water. Cook covered on stove one hour.
Heat 6 oz water and 2 tablespoons citric acid to melt or solubilise the acid. Add 4 heaping tablespoons of brown sugar to the mixture and pour over the rolls.
Bake in oven one hour at 350, last 15 min uncovered. Baste occasionally.
Cool and take off the solidified fat after a night in fridge. Can serve by heating in microwave. Best after 2+ days in fridge.
I love stuffed cabbage, but haven’t had it like that. My mom made a similar version but Serbo-Croatian, called sarma. Still make it often. Cooked in the pot with sauerkraut and smoked sausage. Hard to change up a long time family recipe, but might try your version.
Based on this recipe, your grandma was from a well-to-do family. From the poorer families living in the Shtetls of Russia, the stuffing would have been mostly rice with a little bit of meat (when possible).
Made a batch tonight.
Filling
Pound of beef
Cup of cooked rice
Shredded carrots
Shredded onion
1 egg
Salt & pepper
Sauce
14.5 oz can tomato sauce
1/3 cup ACV
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 diced onion
1/2 cup golden raisins
Assembled and baked at 350 for an hour or so. Let it stand for a bit before serving.
Pretty good result… enough to feed 6. Or 2 people 3 times. Not sure if I would put in the effort if not under quarantine and freak cold snap in May though.
Because Ashkenazi Jews, and especially Eastern European ones only add raisins to sweet dishes, like noodle kugel as one example, or rugelah. I grew up on stuffed cabbage, my wife does a great rendition, though her Moldavian upbringing prefers green bell peppers as wrapper in place of cabbage. Also very good.
And no vinegar, either, acidity in stuffed cabbage is added via tomato paste.
We watched Milk Street cooking show today and they (supposedly) cooked Georgian Chicken Tapaka. Save for the chicken, and even then Georgians actually use hens and not chicken, and a few spices, there was nothing “Georgian” about the dish, not the main ingredient, not the preparation, nor actual cooking technique. They cooked Italian chicken under a brick and called it “Georgian”. How many would know the difference, right?
As Russian joke goes:
Dear TV show! Really appreciate the recipe! We didn’t have avocados, so we used boiled potatoes instead, and in place of shrimp we used fried pork belly, but in general we really enjoyed your salad of avocado and shrimp!
my grandmother did similar but added 6 ginger snap cookies broken up to the tomato based sauce. added sweetness and it thickened the canned tomato sauce
Rick that raises a question - I wonder if this came from my parents’ years in Cincinnati immediately after undergrad, along with other things like Brats and sauerkraut. Thanks for mentioning!
For those who called stuffed cabbage ‘pigs in a blanket’… what did they call these? Or are they an American thing? FWIW my mother-in-law called stuffed cabbage “Prakkas”(sp?).
Boy this takes me back. My mom’s best friend and my Grandmother on my Dads side made the best stuffed cabbage. I love it. We’ll have to try these recipes with my wife. My grandmother made the best kreplach and rugelach but I never forgave her for making me tongue sandwiches once I found out what it was :-0
Our family uses the Polish Galabki version with hamburger, onions, rice, with stewed tomatoes and drained sauerkraut atop each layer of cabbage roll in a large dutch oven. My Wife has carried on our tradition (sans sauerkraut since she isn’t a fan)