But did you know that before the potato became a commonly used product, cabbage was the “breadwinner”? Therefore, she is now called the “Queen of the Garden”. Previously, skits occupied huge sown areas. Delicious green heads of cabbage went to cabbage soup and salads. And in winter, people gladly ate healthy sour cabbage. Later, the Russian people got acquainted with other types of this vegetable. Beijing, Brussels, broccoli, cauliflower - all these varieties of cabbage are very tasty. But the white-headed “Queen of the garden” still reigns in Slavic cuisine.
In this article, we will consider only one way to cook it, namely stewing. Do you think that a modest everyday dish will come out? You are mistaken. Young, ripe and pickled; with sausages, pork, chicken; with wine, tomato sauce or cream - do not count stewed cabbage recipes. This vegetable will be very tasty in combination with potatoes. So you can stew cabbage at least every day and every time you get a new dish.
The basics of the culinary process
This vegetable is good in that it has its own taste, and also incorporates the aroma of spices and related products. You can stew cabbage both fresh and pickled. Below we will consider in detail individual recipes. Braised cabbage, however, requires prior preparation. What does it consist of?
Fresh head of cabbage should be taken from the upper hard leaves (otherwise it will be inedible), then cut into four parts and remove the stump. The rest of the cabbage should be chopped into strips. You can mash it a little with your hands so that the juice begins to stand out. Sauerkraut should be handled differently. Firstly, it is already chopped. We simply sort it out, removing peppercorns and cutting especially large pieces. For stewing, choose not very sour cabbage. Of course, you can adjust the taste by soaking the product in water. But along with excess acidity, vitamin C will also go away, and the quality of the finished dish will deteriorate. If you do not want to get tasteless seaweed at the exit, as in the factory canteen, choose high-quality sauerkraut. And now we turn to the preparation of the dish.
Step-by-step recipe for stewed cabbage
We need a cauldron, preferably voluminous. Even if you cook a small amount of braised cabbage from a fresh head of cabbage, chopped straws will take up a lot of space in the pan. Then it "settles down", shrinks in volume by three to four times. But first, you need the cabbage to fit into the whole cauldron. We take an average head of cabbage, weighing one and a half kilograms. The classic stewed cabbage recipe recommends giving preference to late varieties, which are harvested in the fall, with the onset of frost. Such heads of cabbage are crispy, and they have many vitamins.
So, the first step. We cut the cabbage, cutting it into not too large, but not too thin straws. For a head of cabbage weighing one and a half kilograms, you need to take three onions. We clean them and shred them with thin half rings. Go to the next step. We put a cauldron on fire, pour vegetable oil into it. When the fat is hot, fry the onion until golden brown. Then add to the cauldron 50-70 grams of tomato paste. But if you like more fresh stewed cabbage, you can skip this step. Now we introduce into the cauldron a straw headed by a head of cabbage. Mix and immediately add one and a half to two glasses of hot boiled water. We are waiting for it to boil. We proceed to the next stage - we reduce the fire and cover the cauldron. From time to time we stir the dish so as not to burn. If necessary, add water. After half an hour of such stewing, the cabbage should be salted, spices added to the dish (a mixture of peppers, coriander, nutmeg). We continue to cook until the vegetable is soft.
Sausage
In Slavic cuisine, stewed cabbage is mainly prepared with meat. But if you do not want to bother with butchering pork or beef for a long time, then you can use sausage. With boiled, half-smoked, dry-cured - choose various recipes at your discretion. Very tasty stewed cabbage is obtained with sausages or sausages. These sausages remain juicy and wonderfully in harmony with the main ingredient of the dish.
First, we cut the vegetables: a head of cabbage - with straws, two large onions - thin half rings, and one carrot. Now we proceed to the thermal processing of products. As in the vegetarian version, we heat the vegetable oil in a casserole. Stir onion. When it becomes golden, add the carrots, and after two minutes - the cabbage. Mix and pour a glass of boiling water. Lower the lid and simmer the vegetables over low heat. Three hundred grams of cooked sausage (sausages or sausages) are cut into arbitrary pieces. Fry in a pan until golden brown. Add the sausages to the bowl when the vegetables are soft. And in the pan, in the oil on which the sausages were fried, lay out one hundred grams of tomato paste. Stir for a minute. We shift to the cauldron. Salt the dish, season with pepper and bay leaf. Stew for another five minutes.
Quick cooking method
As you can see, the recipe for stewed cabbage with sausages is quite simple. But there is an even faster way to cook this dish. For this we need only a frying pan with high sides. We rub two carrots, and chop the cabbage with a small straw. We heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan (only it does not mutate and does not emit carcinogenic substances when heated). We spread carrots and cabbage. We cover the pan and fry over high heat, stirring often enough so that the vegetables do not burn. When the cabbage becomes golden, reduce the heat. Pour half a glass of boiling water. Three hundred grams of sausages (or boiled sausage) cut. Add to the cabbage stewed in a pan. The recipe recommends immediately salt the dish and toss the seasonings. After that, put out another ten minutes. During this time, wash a small bunch of dill and chop it finely. Turn off the heat under the pan and sprinkle the dish with fresh herbs.
With chicken
Poultry is cooked quickly, and there is no hassle with it. Chicken has a neutral taste, and in addition, it goes well with fresh cabbage, while pork with sour. For the dish, you can take different parts of the carcass - breast, chicken legs, wings, legs. But the recipe for stewed cabbage with chicken obliges us to first grind meat. This means that we must separate it from the bones and, if possible, from the skin.
Half a fillet cut along the fibers into pieces. We chop the two onions finely. Fry until golden brown in vegetable oil in a cauldron. Put the meat. We fry for about five minutes, until the pieces are white on all sides. Only now the recipe for stewed cabbage with meat allows us to add chopped heads of cabbage (weighing a kilogram or a little more) to the casserole. Mix, cover and fry for about 20 minutes. You should keep a kettle with boiling water on hand to add hot water in case of cabbage burning. Then add a few tablespoons of tomato paste, salt, pepper. Reduce the heat and simmer for another 20 minutes under the lid.
With mushrooms
We shred straw a large head of cabbage. First, in several stages, fry it in a pan. The recipe for stewed cabbage with mushrooms suggests cooking in the oven. Therefore, first we fry the vegetables, and then transfer to a cauldron or on a baking sheet with high walls. Four bulbs shred. Three pounds of carrots. Fry the onion. Add carrots and a little sweat in the pan. Move to the cabbage. On a dry frying pan we spread half a kilogram of peeled and coarsely chopped mushrooms. When they start the juice, we express in a cauldron. Add vegetable oil and fry the mushrooms. Also move them to the cauldron. Add three spoons of tomato paste, two cups of boiling water. We put in the oven preheated to 200 degrees. Stew until tender. Sometimes you need to open the oven door and check the condition of the dish. If the water has evaporated, the stewed cabbage recipe recommends pouring boiling water so that the vegetables do not burn.
With prunes
Dried fruits (especially if you buy smoked ones) give the dish a smack flavor and aroma. First, pour a glass of prunes with boiling water so that it swells and becomes soft. After about ten minutes, we will salt the water, and take out the bones. As a basis, we take the recipe for stewed cabbage with sausages, but you can make a dish with chicken or completely vegetarian. First, fry the meat in a casserole, then add the onion finely chopped. When it is gilded, add grated carrots and chopped cabbage. Pour a glass of boiling water and simmer for a quarter of an hour under the lid. Add prunes and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Mix, pour another incomplete glass of boiling water. Season the dish with spices and salt. Continue to simmer under the lid for another quarter of an hour.
With potatoes
If you cook cabbage with meat, then you need to serve some side dish for this dish. Why not cook it all together? Specially for this case, a recipe for stewed cabbage with potatoes was also invented. First, fry pork with spices until golden brown. We shift the meat to the cauldron. Its place in the pan is occupied by onions and carrots. Fry for 5 minutes and also transfer to the cauldron. Pour 300 milliliters of boiling water, simmer for 20 minutes under the lid. Fry chopped cabbage forks in vegetable oil. When the vegetable becomes a bronze hue, add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. After 5 minutes, we send the contents of the pan to the cauldron. Fry until cooked 5 chopped potatoes. We shift to cabbage. Stew for another 10 minutes, and then insist the dish under the lid for another quarter of an hour.
How to cook sauerkraut
The sour tint of this appetizer goes well with fatty meats. But there are vegetarian recipes for stewed sauerkraut. Here is one of them - with caraway seeds. Three onions finely chop. Lightly fry in olive oil until soft. Carrots - 600 grams - chop finely. Add this mashed potatoes to the onion. Let’s sweat a little vegetables over a small fire under the lid. Now we introduce into the dish about a kilogram of sauerkraut. Pour water right there. The liquid should completely cover the vegetables. After half an hour stew add two teaspoons of caraway seeds, pepper, add salt, if necessary. Ten minutes before cooking, the stewed cabbage recipe prescribes pouring a teaspoon of caraway seeds into the cabbage.
Some people cannot tolerate the specific smell of heated sauerkraut. To neutralize it, put in a cauldron a heap of rye bread. When the dish is ready, discard the slice.
Bigos
According to one version, this recipe for delicious stewed cabbage was invented in Poland, and according to another, it was removed from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by King Vladislav Jagiello (14th century). Now a dish called "bigos", "bigus" and Beiguss is prepared in vast territories from Belarus and Ukraine to Germany. And in Poland and Lithuania there are as many recipes for delicious stewed cabbage as in Russia - for cooking soup. Bigos can be done with hunting sausages, game, pork underbelly. Mushrooms, red wine, tomato paste, prunes are added to the dish. But bigos has one rule. For the dish, a mixture of fresh and sauerkraut is taken. The ingredients are prepared separately. The cabbage is stewed, and other vegetables and meat are fried in a pan. They mix at the very end. Let's now take a closer look at the recipe for classic Polish bigos.
A dish sung by Mickiewicz
Maybe the recipe for stewed cabbage with meat was born in Lithuania. But only the Poles gave Bigos sophistication and charm. And all because there must be three kinds of meat in the “right” dish. Take raw pork 300 g and 150 g smoked sausages and sausages. In a large cauldron we put a kilogram of sauerkraut, pour 300 ml of water and put it to stew. In the meantime, fry three shredded onions on pork lard. Add coarsely chopped pork. Fry until roasted meat. A small head of fresh cabbage with straws. Cook mushrooms, filter the broth. Add fresh sauerkraut to the sauerkraut, continue to simmer for half an hour. We cut smoked meats and sausages. When the fresh cabbage already stops crackling, add three types of meat, onions, seasonings, a glass of wine, mushrooms and the broth in which they were cooked. We extinguish all this for another two hours on a small fire under the lid.
Reviews
Cooks love to use a variety of stewed cabbage recipes. After all, they can be modified according to their taste preferences. For example, add sour cream sauce to an almost finished dish. In the reviews, readers claim that it will turn out very tasty if you heat a couple of tablespoons of flour in a dry frying pan to a pink color. After that, you can add it to the cabbage. Then the dish will acquire a velvety structured taste. Many culinary experts advise pouring wine or broth instead of water - this way the dish will turn out more aromatic. In a word, don't be afraid to experiment with cabbage. In the reviews it is noted that although dishes from it are prepared for a long time, but they do not require constant attention from the cook.