UN-STUFFED CABBAGE SAVES TIME BUT SPARES THE FLAVORS
One-pot meatball recipe is low-maintenance enough for a weeknight
Stuffed cabbage is like the hand-knitted blanket of food for me: a cozy comfort that holds the essence of my grandmother’s love. It’s not surprising I’ve been craving it lately. But I haven’t gotten around to making her recipe because it has felt like more of a project than I can motivate myself for.
The main sticking point has been the step of blanching the head of cabbage to make the leaves pliable enough to use as wrappers. It’s not difficult, really, and I even find it fun once I get into it. But still, it has been a barrier, so I found a work-around with this recipe.
This dish has all the essential f lavors and textures of Grandma’s beloved dish: tender cabbage and a blend of ground beef and rice, smothered in a sweet
tangy, raisin-sprinkled tomato sauce. But here, the meat-andrice combination is reborn in the form of meatballs, and the cabbage is chopped and sautéed, so
there is no blanching or stuffing needed. And, rather than being left with a kitchen full of pans to wash, everything happens in one pot.
While I was tampering with tradition, I made a couple of small ingredient tweaks, too: swapping in brown rice in place of white (I saved another step by using frozen cooked rice), using no-salt-added tomato sauce, and adding maple syrup (more sparingly) instead of white sugar for a deeper flavored sweetness in a minimally processed way.
The final dish hit the spot exactly the way I needed it to, providing all the nourishing comfort I have been yearning for without demanding much effort at all.