Stuffed Cabbage

Boil a large pot of water, and drop your entire head of cabbage in. It will probably need to cook for 15 minutes or so. If you want to, you can core the caggage beforehand, which might make it easier to peel off the leaves later on. Remove the cabbage from the pot (with tongs!) and put it in a colander. Once it’s cool enough to touch, you can peel off the leaves.

Meanwhile heat oven to 350° and start making the filling. Heat oil and butter in deep pan and cook onions over very low heat until they’re soft and translucent (10 minutes). Add garlic and continue to sauté until very fragrant. Add mushrooms to the pan. Turn up the heat to medium-low, and cook until the mushrooms begin to release their juices and turn soft. Add pepper to the pan. Cook until the mixture is soft and fragrant. Add veggie ground beef, and turn the heat up to medium-high. Break up any large pieces and brown evenly. Add soy sauce, salt and a lot of black pepper. Turn off the heat and add the cooked rice to the pan and mix well.

Put a spoonful of filling in the center of your cabbage leaf, and wrap it like a burrito, tucking in the sides as you roll. The softer the leaf, the easier this is. The harder cores of the leaves can sometimes make rolling a little difficult, so I had to chop out the core in some of the leaves before filling them. There will be a lot of extra filling, so you could probably get two cabbages worth of bundles from this recipe, if you want to make a TON.

Place bundles into the pan seam-side down. Glass baking dishes work best for this. Top with diced tomato and vegetable broth. Bake, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours. Every now and then, peek into the oven and spoon some of the liquid over parts of the cabbage that aren’t submerged so they don’t dry out too much.