Gonna start with, this is certainly not my favorite dish to make. I'm just not a big fan of cabbage unless its super cooked down in egg rolls. But my husband and 2 of my 3 kids like it so 3 of us get to suffer once in a while. lol
So some people that make these don't cook the rice beforehand. I've always partially cooked it but with the slow cooker I used since my favorite one died, I probably should have not cooked it. Live and learn right? Everyone ate it so It wasn't that bad and i'm biased since I don't like cabbage :)
So you will need:
Ground beef, ground pork or both
1 cup Uncooked rice
2 larger cans tomato sauce or one of those big ones or a quart of homemade sauce.
A head of cabbage, We used purple.
Garlic minces , 1 tbsp-ish, I didn't measure
1/2 small onion minces
Salt
Pepper
Italian herbs for the tomato sauce (whichever ones you want, marjoram, sage, thyme, oregano, I've even been known to use lavender.)
So cook up your meat. I used a mix of ground beef and hot sausage.
Add salt & pepper
In the tomato sauce add all the Italian seasonings plus salt, pepper and garlic to taste (can you tell we like garlic around here?)
Add 1/4 of the tomato sauce mix to the meat. Add the uncooked rice to this as well. Mix it up really really well.
Take the head of cabbage and cut off about an inch off the bottom so we can pull leaves off easier in a few.
Toss the whole head into a pot of boiling water and boil for a few minutes. The leaves should
start pulling off easier and be much softer.
Now you are going to take your meat and rice mixture and spoon some into each leaf, then roll it up. Easier said than done when using regular green or purple cabbage. My personal fav to use is savoy but harder to find in my town.
Now take about 1/3 cup of remaining sauce and spread it on the bottom of the slow cooker.
As you roll up each cabbage leaf, place them into the slow cooker. I don't have pics of me rolling it because they were hideous and I only have 2 hands. When I started making this my oldest wasn't home to man the camera for me :)
In the end it will looks something like this. After I've cooked it for 6 hours on low, I plate it and top with cheese, which I also forgot to get a shot of because, well it's me..
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