Wok's For Dinner: Cabbage Rolls

Sorry, no picture with tonight's meal. My camera battery decided to run out of juice and wasn't charged up enough by the time dinner was ready. I had two heads of cabbage with my May Angel Food Ministries order, and I used one for Kielbasa & Cabbage last week. I didn't want a repeat of the same meal, however.

But I remembered a girl I went to school with oh so many years ago. In Junior High especially, nearly every time we had a class party, she brought Cabbage Rolls. It always struck me as an odd thing for a teenager to want to bring to schol for a party, but she loved them! I never got her mom's recipe, so when I added Cabbage Rolls to my May Once a Month cooking menu, I had to do some Internet searching to find a recipe that matched my memory of what Cabbage Rolls were supposed to be like.

This is the recipe I used, with a few variations since I turned it into a freezer meal. I used ground turkey instead of ground beef for the filling. Basically, I cooked the ground turkey with chopped onion, salt & pepper, then placed in a freezer bag and into the freezer it went. Today I prepared the rice in my rice cooker, then mixed with the (thawed) ground turkey. While the rice was cooking, I boiled the cabbage leaves for 20 minutes to really soften them up. For the sauce, I made as directed in the recipe. After rolling the filling into the cabbage leaves, instead of baking, I placed the cabbage rolls in a 6-qt sauce pan, covered with the sauce, and let simmer for about 10 minutes. I omitted the 2tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1/4 cup cold water.

Hubs said the cabbage rolls needed more salt, my daughter loved the cabbage rolls and ate all of hers plus her brother's, my son didn't like it one bit, and I enjoyed it although I agreed with my husband that they were bland. I probably should have salted the water when I boiled the cabbage leaves. But all in all, it was a change of pace to try something different.