Easy Old Fashioned Cabbage Rolls

Cabbage rolls are a classic main dish. If you’re like me, you probably remember these being a staple at your grandmother’s Sunday dinner table. The are quite nutritious as cabbage is full of fiber and ground beef is loaded with protein. The addition of the rice helps to make them more satiating. These old fashioned cabbage rolls are overall a great staple to add to your meal plan rotation!

Ingredients For Your Cabbage Rolls

1. Cabbage
2. Ground Beef
3. Rice
4. Egg
5. Onion
6. Diced Tomatoes
7. Tomato Sauce
8. Lemon
9. Brown Sugar
10. Salt
11. Pepper

Traditionally cabbage rolls are made with green cabbage. Although truly, you could choose purple cabbage. Either option will give the same result and level of nutrition. I prefer to use a lean ground been for this recipe, so I use either a 90/10 or 93/7 ratio. I find that the fattier grinds have a little too much grease for the dish. The diced tomatoes and tomato sauce combination is what I prefer, but you could use just sauce if that is what you have on hand. Also, the brown sugar could be substituted for any type of sweetener that you prefer.

Preparing The Ingredients

Now that we’ve gone over the ingredients, let’s talk about how to prepare them. The most time consuming portion of the recipe is removing the cabbage leaves from the heat, so you’ll want to start with this step.

Begin by filling a large pot with water and bringing to a soft boil. Once boiling, simply place the entire head of cabbage into the water stem side up. Every few minutes, check to see if any of your cabbage leaves are easily peeling away. You may need to use a knife and continuously make small cuts near the stalk to easily pull the leaves away. Keep checking the head and pulling leaves away every few minutes until you have 12-15 leaves.

The next step in preparing the old fashioned cabbage rolls is to mix the filling. This is extremely easy! Simply add the ground beef, eggs, and rice to a large bowl. Next finely dice the onion and add to the bowl with the salt and pepper. Mix these ingredients very well with your hand until everything is evenly combined. *If you are using white rice, it will cook perfectly in the allotted time. However, if you are using brown rice, I suggest cooking it about half way in water on the stove top before adding to the mixture.

Assembling The Cabbage Rolls

So now you have your mixture ready to go, and your cabbage leaves are peeled from the head. The next part is simple. All you need to do us take a few tablespoons of the meat mixture and place it in the middle of one of the cabbage leaves.

Next, fold the sides of the cabbage leaf over. Then tuck the end in over the sides and roll it so that all four sides are on the bottom of your baking dish. Now simply repeat with the rest of the meat mixture and cabbage leaves. You should end up with 12-15 rolls depending on how much filling you use for each one. Add your old fashioned cabbage rolls to a baking sheet as you roll them.

Making The Sauce

The final step before baking the cabbage rolls is to prepare the tomato sauce to go on top. This also just takes a few simple steps. Add your tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, lemon juice, brown sugar, and salt and pepper to a small sauce pan. This mixture simply needs to be heated long enough to dissolve the sugar evenly throughout the sauce. You will not even need to bring this to a boil.

Now all that’s left is to pour the tomato sauce over the cabbage rolls. In addition, you can optionally top these cabbage rolls with some thinly sliced onion before transferring to the oven.

Baking The Cabbage Rolls

Now all that is left to do is to bake the cabbage rolls. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. These take a little while to cook so be sure to prepare this dish several hours before meal time. I like to bake these covered with foil for about 2 hours and then an additional 1 hour uncovered. This ensures that the meat is cooked through and that the rice becomes soft.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe. Be sure to tag us on Instagram or Facebook if you decide to try this in your own homestead kitchen! @almostheavenhomesteading

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