Cabbage Rolls

- Including recipes for pickled beets and preserved dill -

Every place has its beloved dishes, even if in some places those beloved dishes originally came from elsewhere. In Saskatchewan, many of our best loved dishes have some Eastern European heritage, often Ukrainian and Polish, along with many German touches.  So back home, our big family dinners are often peppered with dishes that I now see to have some Eastern European influence. The most cherished of these are without a doubt cabbage rolls and perogies. These two dishes are omnipresent in Saskatchewan, and are crowd favourites at any big family celebration throughout the year. 

They are not quick dishes to whip up, but are dishes that Grandmas and Aunties and uncles or communities in small town church halls will spend a whole day making in massive batches, and then freeze to serve throughout the year or sell by the bag or roaster at community fundraisers. I was shocked to discover, when I lived in Nova Scotia, that some people there didn't know what perogies were - this staple food of Saskatchewan, which I had assumed was known and eaten throughout Canada, though in truth was special to the Prairies. It just shows how diverse the culinary geography of a country can be, even if much of that culinary heritage is imported from other countries.

While cabbage rolls may seem like a bit of a complex dish with various parts and a long cooking time, they are in fact very simple to make, if you just look at each step separately. Each part of the cooking and assembly is very simple on its own. It's just that there are numerous steps, so all tolled the full process will be a long one. That is why a good Saskatchewanian would recommend you make a big batch all at once, and divide it in multiple pans, ready to put right into the oven that day you want to eat them. The process can be prepped up until the final bake, and then they can be directly baked from the freezer, making this whole process of batch prepping and freezing very convenient. 

This month, in quarantine, I made cabbage rolls for the first time all on my own. I had made them with my grandma before, but had never gotten up the courage to make them on my own until now, as they do just involve so many steps. Since here I have slightly different ingredients at my disposal, I did modify the procedure slightly, just because, for example, I can't find Campbell's tomato soup cans here, so I made a tomato sauce myself. That said, as my grandma's recipe is the golden one in our family, and since I basically followed it, just subbing homemade tomato soup for the bought stuff, I am including her recipe here, rather than my tweaked experiment.

One thing that was a bit of a fail on my part (and is visible from the photos above and below here), is that when I was prepping my cabbage rolls, I made more of a tomato sauce, rather than tomato soup, and never thinned it out. This made for a less saucy cabbage roll, as the sauce dried up in the cooking process. So I suggest you do not mimic the sauce consistency above and do follow the soup consistency from the recipe, as it will reduce and thicken into a sauce as you cook the cabbage rolls.

Grandma Weber's Cabbage Rolls:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups uncooked rice, or 3 cups leftover, cooked rice*
• 1 head of cabbage
• 1.25 kg raw hamburger meat (or any combination of ground pork and beef)
• 2 medium onions, finely diced and briefly fried on low heat
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
• You can also add a little diced carrot and celery, though the recipe doesn't call for it.
• 1 rounded tbsp salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp poultry seasoning (optional)
• bunch of freshly dill, chopped, optional
• 600ml, or two small cans Campbell's condensed tomato soup (you can substitute homemade condensed tomato soup, aka homemade tomato sauce)
• 600ml water (Not optional - you need this whether you use canned condensed soup or homemade tomato sauce)
• A medium sized roaster, or a few pie plates or cake tins for baking the cabbage rolls
• Tin foil, to cover the cabbage rolls during baking

Directions:

1. In a pot or rice cooker, cook the rice, and set aside to cool
2. Next, prepare the cabbage. Peel off and discard the outer, layer of the cabbage, as it will likely be bruised and wilted. The continue to carefully remove the cabbage leaves, one by one, being careful not to break them. Rinse the cabbage leaves, and with the outer side up, shave off a little of the stem part, so that the whole leaf is a rather uniform thickness
3. Steam or blanch the cabbage until it is just half cooked, and set it to dry on a clean kitchen towel while you prepare the rest of the ingredients
4. In a heavy bottomed frying pan, briefly fry onions and garlic with a little vegetable oil over low heat until translucent and fragrant. If you are adding carrots and celery, fry it with the onions and garlic as well
5. In a large mixing bowl, combine the hamburger meat with the onions, garlic, optional veggies, salt and pepper, and poultry seasoning. Add the cooked rice, and stir to combine thoroughly.
6. In a separate bowl, combine the tomato soup with water, and set these two bowls on a clean workspace, along with the cooked, cooled cabbage, ready to assemble cabbage rolls
   
   For the assembly:
7. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F, if you are baking the cabbage rolls the same day
8. Choose your baking dish or dishes, you could use a few pie plates, cake plates, or a small roaster if you plan to serve the cabbage rolls all at one meal. 
9. Set your baking dish(es) beside your bowls of filling, sauce, and cabbage on a wide, clean workspace
10. Add a few scoops of sauce to the bottom of the baking dish and spread evenly to the edges so the cabbage rolls won't burn during baking
11. Take a clean plate on which to assemble the cabbage rolls
12. Take a nice medium cabbage leave, and set down on your plate, so the open side is facing upward, ready to be filled. Scoop 1-3 tbsp of filling onto the cabbage leaf, and fold it shut, closing the two longer sides first, and then rolling it up, or folding the other two sides (how you do it is really up to you). Ideally the cabbage should overlap at least an inch or so along the longer seam so it won't burst as you remove it from the pan later, so don't over stuff the cabbage rolls
13. Lay the cabbage roll, seam down, in the baking dish, and repeat the previous step until you have filled the baking dish with one full layer of cabbage rolls. 
14. Once one layer is filled, add a few more scoops of soup on top of the cabbage rolls, and spread to cover evenly
15. If you are using a pie plate or cake plate, you will need to move on to a second baking dish now. If you are using a roaster, you can add a second layer of cabbage rolls on top after you have added some soup over this layer (Cabbage rolls are like Ukrainian cuisine's answer to cannelloni, so you can kind of keep that in mind as you are assembling them. There should be a little tomato soup between layers so it will all cook evenly without burning, and with at least a little sauce to soak into the mix)
16. Finish filling your baking dishes or your roaster, and then pour the remaining tomato soup evenly between the baking dish(es). Don't fret if it seems like a lot of liquid
17. Cover the pans with foil, or put the lid on the roaster
18. The cabbage rolls can be made in advance up to this point. If you are freezing the cabbage rolls at this point, just cover tightly with foil, and ideally a lid of some sort, and freeze until the day you wish to cook the cabbage rolls. If you cook the cabbage rolls at a later date, no need to pre-thaw them, just put them directly in the oven and proceed to cook as below. The cooking time during the first step of cooking will be longer, so just be sure they are fully bubbling before you reduce the heat.
    
    Cook the cabbage rolls:
19. Bake in a preheated oven at 300 degrees F until bubbling, this might take 30-45 minutes, more if the cabbage rolls were frozen
20. Turn the oven down to 175 degrees F and bake for 30 minutes more
21. Then Turn the oven down "way down" to about 100 degrees F, and bake for 60 minutes more
22. Turn the oven off, and let the cabbage rolls cool slightly in the oven (remember the meat in the cabbage rolls was not previously cooked, so you could cut into the middle of a big cabbage roll and check that the meat is fully done if you have any reason not to be sure whether they're fully ready
23. Serve with whatever you want, but these are great alongside perogies and homemade German sausage, or alongside a stuffed Turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy as well

I had mine with homemade perogies and pickled beets (recipe below), and some yogurt (in place of sour cream), topped with preserved fresh dill (recipe below). And then I had a glass of Kvas with it, which is a fizzy Russian drink made of fermented bread - more on that later.

Pickled Beets:

Ingredients:

• Fresh beets, peeled and diced - as many as you want
• Water, to cover
• A healthy douse of vinegar
• A couple heaping tbsp of sugar
• 1 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Peel and dice your beets. These can be diced as large or small as you want, I keep mine bite size, so I can easily snack on them from the fridge
2. Place your beets in a heavy bottomed pot, and add water, enough to cover the beets. 
3. Add a generous douse of white vinegar (or white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar if you feel fancy). You must add at least a little vinegar, but the amount you add will depend on how tangy you like your beets. Add some and take a quick taste of your brine to see if it's sour enough - raw beets aren't dangerous
4. Add sugar to taste, just a few spoonfulls
5. Add a little salt, about 1 tsp if you are doing a pot of beets
6. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15-30 minutes, or until the beets are cooked, but not soft.
7. Let cool in the pot, transfer to a jar, with enough brine to cover the beets
8. Store in the fridge, they should keep for a month or two.

Preserved Dill:

• 1 bunch of fresh dill
• Some oil

Wash the fresh dill, pat dry with a kitchen towel, and finely chop it, discarding the stems. Place it in a small jar, and add enough oil that the dill is all safely coated. This will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, as long as the dill is all coated in oil. Add to salads, cabbage rolls and perogies, or any other food that would go well with dill. You can also stir it into sour cream or plain yogurt, with a little salt, for a delicious dill dip

* NOTE: if we're being entirely honest, I used leftover, previously frozen rice when I made this recently, as I see it as a perfect use for leftover rice. I usually keep a tupperware of leftover rice in the freezer for quick weeknight bubur ayam or congee (savoury rice porridge) dinners, but which I now will also use for cabbage rolls if the need arises. My grandma always uses fresh rice in her cabbage rolls, and certainly I'd use fresh rice if I were selling them or something, but they are perfectly good with leftover rice as well. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this recipe may have originally been an Eastern European use for leftover rice, as it certainly gives old rice new life.