#cabbage roll

When I cook a holiday feast, I like to include at least one historic heritage recipe. I found this one in a little booklet about the calendar customs of Znojmo, the South Moravian district my great-grandparents were from. Here in the states we are much more familiar with the Polish or Ukrainian cabbage rolls—stuffed with ground meat and covered in a tomato sauce.

This is more like hubník, the mushroom pudding that I make a Christmas, that is one of my favorite foods in the world.

I started with the recipe in the book, but it was one of those very basic historical ones, so I went searching and found a couple of more that were a little more in depth and have recorded what I came up with.

So, firstly the original recipe:

Cabbage roll:

Boil two heads of cabbage with beef. Then chop them finely and stew them in beef fat. Season with pepper and let cool. Then add three eggs and a half to the cabbage and a bread roll soaked in milk. Mix, salt and bake in a baking dish (gapsala Zuzana Pokorná; recipe revolution, bourgeois cuisine).

And what I actually did, based mostly on a recipe I found online. (Link below). Usually I translate the measurements to something my familiar to my American readers, but I didn’t have time today as I was cooking a whole dinner while writing. When I make this again, I will double the recipe.

Ingredients:

1/2 head of small cabbage

Beef broth

4 strips of bacon, reserve the rendered fat

40 grams bread crumbs

40 grams cubed bun soaked in 2 TB milk

2 eggs, separated

Salt

Pepper

Directions:

Cover chopped cabbage with beef broth and bring to a boil. Drop to a steady simmer and cook until soft.

Meanwhile fry the bacon and reserve the fat.

Make bread crumbs if necessary and soak cubed bun in milk.

Whip egg white into peaks.

Strain cabbage and return to pan with reserved bacon fat. Sauté gently for 10 minutes or so.

Crumble the bacon.

Combine everything in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.

Shape into a loaf and bake for 30-40 minutes in a preheated oven at 350°

Original recipe was found here (page 87):

More in depth recipe:

Hungry for stuffed cabbage?

So, recently I was hungry for stuffed cabbage. I had never made it before, so after Googling a few recipes and soliciting advice from a Facebook food group and Nextdoor, I came up with my own. You can put this URL into Just The Recipe or do the Cooked Wiki “hack” to skip all my bullshit up here. I’m not a huge fan of rice in meatballs like you typically see with stuffed peppers or stuffed…