A Recipe for Good Cabbage Rolls

I come from Hungarian descent and I absolutely love cabbage rolls. I'm not saying that they're exclusively Hungarian, because they're not. From what I'm told, most Eastern European countries have their own variations on the dish. It's always basically the same deal: cabbage, meat, rice and some kind of tomato sauce. Unfortunately here in America the dish hasn't transplanted itself well due to the main ingredient of cabbage.

My grandmother, in my opinion, makes the best cabbage rolls I've ever had. She learned to make them from her grandmother who was born in the outskirts of Budapest well over a hundred years ago. She in turn learned it from her mother and so on and so fourth. There is nothing particularly special about the cabbage rolls. They're likely a regional recipe that has gone on for a few hundred years.

First you start with your cabbage of course. The cabbage must be boiled so that the leaves are soft enough to roll around the meat. Before you boil the cabbage you have to remove the core of the cabbage so that when it is boiling the leaves will fall more easily away from the cabbage. While the cabbage is boiling you can soften some chopped yellow onion in a tablespoon of butter, this will go into the meat later. Once the cabbage has finished boiling, remove it from the water and let it cool before handling it.

Now take about three pounds of ground beef and place it into a large mixing bowl. This three pounds is relative to the size of your family with mine including four people. Season your ground beef with salt and pepper and then pour the onions over the top of the beef and mix it well. After you have done that it is time to add the rice. My grandmother prefers to leave the rice uncooked when mixing it into the beef, but I pefer to boil it ahead of time so that when it is cooking in the sauce the rice is softened further and easier to eat, you can use any rice but my grandmother has always used long grain, white rice.

Now you have to roll the meat into the cabbage leaves. The easiest way to do this is like putting a diaper on a baby. Lay a leaf of cabbage down and a little under a handful of the meat and rice mixture into the middle of it. Then first roll up the bottom (that would be the end that bears the mark of the core) and roll over a side and then another side and finally tuck in the top and the meat is rolled (hopefully secure) in the cabbage. Now all that's left is to cook the cabbage rolls.

Most people like to bake cabbage rolls and granted they aren't bad that way, but in my grandmother's opinion you boil them. Not in water of course, but in a tomato stock. She uses a simple stock of a large can of straight tomato juice and 3 cans of Campbell's tomato soup. You can also mix in sour cream later to richen the sauce. You boil the cabbage rolls for 3 to 3 and a half hours before serving.