Mom’s Classic Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

This dish, God this dish brings back so many childhood memories that I literally sat here for 30 minutes in a daze just remembering some of them. Like there was the time we were harvesting cabbages from our garden and we each got to pick a single plant that we were in charge of to take care of. Whoever grew the biggest cabbage won. The prize was Mom would cook our favorite dessert to go with her famous stuffed cabbages. That summer I ended up winning. This cabbage was so huge that I couldn’t lift it. I know I have a picture of me trying to hold it on my lap. I’ll dig it out to share the pic once my arm is better.

Then there are the countless memories where our kitchen was soooooooooooooo hot (we didn’t have AC growing up and we only had window fans) and Mom had 3 large canning pots on the stove with boiling water making hundreds of stuffed cabbages. I can still remember that hot cabbage smell and hot/wet air in the kitchen. Dad would use the tongs to pull out the leaves, put them in the colander and my Mom, sister and I would each trim the stems.

Ingredients

• 1 large size head cabbage (about 3-5 pounds)
• 1 lb ground beef (or 1 1/2 lbs if not using pork)
• 1/2 pound ground pork (omit if using all beef)
• 1 medium onion, chopped small
• 3 Tbl minced garlic
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 3/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp parsley flakes
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 Tbl tomato paste
• 1 1/2 cups cooked, cooled white rice
• 3 10.75 ounce cans tomato soup (if using a deep dish pan with a 3” side use 4 cans)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F, rack in the center.
2. Remove core from cabbage. Place whole head in a large pot filled with boiling, salted water.
3. Cover and cook 3 minutes, or until softened enough to pull off individual leaves. If the leaves do not pull off easily, return the cabbage to the pot to boil a minute or two more.
4. When the leaves are cool enough, use a paring knife to cut away the thick center stem from each leaf, without cutting all the way through.
5. ......................................

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