My first attempt at cabbage rolls using Barb's recipe. What did I do wrong?

M

music-city-missy

Well-known member
I made Barb's recipe and while they taste wonderful, the cabbage is tough as nails. I boiled a nice big head of cabbage our neighbors gave us. I pulled the leaves off as they would come loose and then once I got them all pulled apart, I boiled the loose leaves until they were fairly limp but still held some of their shape. I was afraid to overcook them since I didn't want them falling apart when I rolled and cooked them. Our oven is out of service and I haven't taken it apart yet to double check which of the two different ignitors they used on this model. So I used the slow cook feature on my Instant Pot and used the highest setting. I cooked them for over 4 hours. Did I not cook the cabbage enough before rolling them up? Did I not cook them long enough? Should I put them in the now thickened sauce and put them back in the Instant Pot and cook some more - slow cook or pressure cook maybe? Or, I actually might be able to fit them in a casserole dish now that I gave some to my daughter and we have eaten some - and I can bake them in the Breville oven. Or are there really just some cabbages that are extra tough?
 
Here is barb_b recipe

RECIPE: - Rec: Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage

I rec'd a few PMs / emails requesting the recipe that Richard used for his latest party. He was so kind and reached out to me re: an authentic Hungarian rec for stuffed cabbage. While I have not made it in a while, my MIL is an expert. SO, below, find the rec as well as her notes on the...
recipeswap.org recipeswap.org

While hers is Hungarian, my family's is Ukrainian/Serbian.

Your cabbage prep sounds right. You do need to trim the stems until they are flat with the rest of the leaf. The one BIG difference I see is the amount and type of liquid. My family uses the large 46 oz can of tomato juice, not water. With my mom, the rice was always Uncle Ben's parboiled rice, but I just use fully cooked rice that I had. The liquid cooks down and if you want a denser tomato flavor, you can either add tomato sauce or tomato puree, but not tomato paste. It takes at least an hour to cook cabbage rolls on stovetop, so I'm not sure how that correlates to a slow cooker on high. In the oven, it takes almost 2 hours, covered. Our sauce is tomato-based with lots of the rinsed sauerkraut, not paprika with roux and sour cream.

I recently used my InstaPot on High to cook spaghetti sauce and it took HOURS...and I still wasn't satisfied. So I put in on low and let it cook overnight for the 6 hours and then it shut off. By morning, it was still warm (no meat was used in this meal). Only then was I happy with the results. The advantage was not having to worry about the sauce sticking like it will on stovetop.
 
marilynfl said:
Here is barb_b recipe

RECIPE: - Rec: Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage

I rec'd a few PMs / emails requesting the recipe that Richard used for his latest party. He was so kind and reached out to me re: an authentic Hungarian rec for stuffed cabbage. While I have not made it in a while, my MIL is an expert. SO, below, find the rec as well as her notes on the...
recipeswap.org recipeswap.org

While hers is Hungarian, my family's is Ukrainian/Serbian.

Your cabbage prep sounds right. You do need to trim the stems until they are flat with the rest of the leaf. The one BIG difference I see is the amount and type of liquid. My family uses the large 46 oz can of tomato juice, not water. With my mom, the rice was always Uncle Ben's parboiled rice, but I just use fully cooked rice that I had. The liquid cooks down and if you want a denser tomato flavor, you can either add tomato sauce or tomato puree, but not tomato paste. It takes at least an hour to cook cabbage rolls on stovetop, so I'm not sure how that correlates to a slow cooker on high. In the oven, it takes almost 2 hours, covered. Our sauce is tomato-based with lots of the rinsed sauerkraut, not paprika with roux and sour cream.

I recently used my InstaPot on High to cook spaghetti sauce and it took HOURS...and I still wasn't satisfied. So I put in on low and let it cook overnight for the 6 hours and then it shut off. By morning, it was still warm (no meat was used in this meal). Only then was I happy with the results. The advantage was not having to worry about the sauce sticking like it will on stovetop.
Click to expand...
I think the biggest difficulty I have found in using both slow cookers and pressure cookers is that liquids don't thicken or reduce and some things get even more watery. I wound up putting them in a dish and baking in the Breville oven a couple of hours and they finally softened up. I have the part to fix the oven now, I just dread getting down and taking the oven apart to replace it even though it doesn't look particularly laborious - I just dread it. I don't know how I became our resident appliance repairperson just because I am mechanically inclined but I did.
 
oh ya...been there, done changed oven coils, oven heating elements, lighting fixtures, garage fixtures, bathroom fixtures, dryer drums. It must have something to do with fallopian tubes.

Remember, the rice is going to absorb some of the moisture and if the chunk of pork was large, it may have limited how much water you added.
 
The first thing that jumped out at me (and I'm somewhat skittish to begin with) when I read your post was that the cabbage was homegrown. There are some real variables with homegrown vegetables. If they weren't picked when ripe, either too early or too late, the quality may be compromised.

My parents had a big vegetable garden when they retired, and they found this out the hard way.

Green beans (pole beans) can go very bitter if left on the vine too long.

Cabbage may be the same way.
 
Michael, I did not know that, considering my Ukrainian, Serbian, Polish and German heritage. Onions & cabbage are etched into my DNA.

This must be like dried beans that literally atrophy when old...and will NEVER, EVER, EVER soften, no matter HOW MANY BLOODY HOURS YOU COOK THAT DAMN BLACK BEAN SOUP.

Lesson learned on that one.
 
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