Rhythm Kitchen: Make Cabbage Rolls with Jamesy Boy

It's a classic and tasty Hungarian dish. Let Jamesy Boy teach you how to make em'!

Jan 18, 2023

Cabbage Rolls

Let’s make some cabbage rolls, shall we?

My great grandma, who we called Nana, was Hungarian. She was a great cook and passed on the love of cooking through the generations to my grandma, then to my dad, then to me and my brothers. She would make all sorts of traditional dishes like breaded pork cutlets, chicken and dumplings, and cabbage rolls.

I usually make these on a Sunday, so I can have lunches for the week. They taste great reheated and this makes enough for several meals. Let’s get crackin’.

Recipe

2lb - ground chicken (traditionally its made with ground pork, but I like chicken better as its healthier. Use whichever you prefer, or a mixture works too)

1 cup rice (I use brown rice, but you can use white if you want)

2-4 cloves of garlic

1 onion

1 heaping tbsp Hungarian Paprika

1 tbsp flour

12-20 tomatoes (more tomatoes = more sauce)

2 tbsp of olive oil

1 tsp sugar

Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 400. Chop your tomatoes in half and put em in a roasting pan. Chop your garlic (doesn’t have to be finely chopped as you’ll put this concoction in a food processor later) and place with tomatoes. Sprinkle some olive oil, salt, and pepper and mix. Roast the tomatoes for 45-60minutes. You will see them start to change colour. Once finished, take the tomatoes, garlic, and juices and buzz up in a food processor to create your sauce. This is ready to go and can be put to the side until later.

Tomatoes chopped in half with salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil

After about 45-60 minutes they should look like this

Put full mixture in food processor

Buzz ‘em up!

Simultaneously, cook your rice. If you are using brown rice it will take around 45 minutes. White rice shouldn’t take more than 15. I don’t need to tell you how to cook rice, if you don’t know, then consult YouTube ;)

While the rice is cooking, core your cabbage. I would consult a YouTube video on how to do this if it seems complicated. It’s pretty easy, you take a small knife and essentially carve a circle around the core. I deepen the carve to about 3/4 of the way through the cabbage. Take a large boiling pot with water and bring to a boil. Place your cored cabbage in the water. It’s easiest if you cover it and the whole thing steams in about 15 minutes or so. Once done, take it out and place on a plate until it’s cooled down a bit, it’ll be fucking hot. Once it’s cooled down you will peel the layers of the cabbage off with your hands. It’s really easy, they come off one by one. The next step is to finely cut the spine off the individual cabbage layers as pictured. You will get to a point where the cabbage leaves are too small for a roll and you can just chop up that remaining cabbage and add to your dish after. Once you’re finished with all the cabbage layers, set aside.

Cored cabbage in boiling water

Cut the spines out of the individual leaves

Here’s a pile of all the cabbage leaves ready to roll!

As the cabbage is steaming, chop your onion. Take a sauté pan and put on medium heat. Heat a tbsp or so of olive oil. Once hot, put your onions in the pan with salt and pepper. In todays recipe, I also added chopped mushrooms and half a jalapeño pepper. I like my filling to have a bit of veg and spice, but you definitely don’t need to add anything extra if you don’t want to. If you do want to include them, add your chopped mushroom & jalapeño to the onions and sauté. Once they are starting to cook down (around 5 minutes), you want to slowly mix in your paprika bit by bit. What I mean is sprinkle some on the onions, mix it in, and then add more, mix it in, and continue until its all gone. When that’s done, add your flour. Same process, bit by bit, mix it in until you’re done. Once the onion mixture is nicely cooked you can turn it off, and place in a large mixing bowl.

Chopped onion, doesn’t have to be TOO fine

This is the good stuff

Today Work in the paprika, bit by bit

As well as the flour

In the mixing bowl, put your cooked onion mixture, cooked rice, and raw meat. I usually lightly salt the meat with a pinch of salt/pepper/paprika as well for extra flavour. Mix everything together.

Salt yo meat, folks!

Cooked rice, salted meat (with some paprika), onion mixture

Mix it up!

Now is the fun part. Take a good scoop of the mixture, grab a cabbage layer, and assemble. You just fold the layer over then tuck in all the sides. I am no pro at this as you can see, but it doesn’t really matter. If you want them to be really pretty, I can’t help you!!! Place the cabbage rolls in either a deep baking dish, or a dutch oven as I have pictured. Once all your rolls are in the dish, sprinkle around the excess cabbage (and meat mixture if there is any left), and then pour your sauce over top. Mix it around a little bit so the sauce coats everything, add another little dash of salt on top and bake in a 375 oven for around 60 minutes.

Here’s how to roll ‘em