Now that I feel all virtuous in the sourcing, there is a guilty confession. This recipe was adapted from Sharon Lebewohl and Rena Bulkin’s The 2nd Ave Deli Cookbook. This is a decidely Jewish cookbook—and my use of pork makes it decidedly treif. What can I say? I like my pork. Let’s think of it as an “eastern European” recipe and move on. My apologies to my in-laws. Aside from the pork, the only other change is the use of the pressure cooker rather than the nearly two hours their version needs to cook on the stove.

Stuffed Cabbage in the Pressure Cooker

For the stuffing:
1 lb ground meat (preferably beef or lamb, or, if you’re obsessive, pork)
3/4 c. uncooked rice
1 c. chopped onion
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. water
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
some thyme

For the cabbage:
1 large cabbage, cored

For the sauce:

2 c. tomato sauce
1 1/2 c. chopped onions
1/2 lemon, chopped into large pieces
1 c. white or brown sugar
1/2 c. white or cider vinegar
1 c. water

What to do:

1) Core the cabbage by making a series of cuts with a long, sharp knife:

2) Bring a very large pot of water to boil. Plop the cabbage in. Boil it for a few minutes, remove, and carefully peel off as many outer layers as you can and set the leaves aside. Repeat until you have at least 12 whole cabbage leaves. Then set the rest of the cabbage aside.

3) Meanwhile, while you’re bringing the water to a boil, combine all of your stuffing ingredients in a large bowl. Combine the sauce ingredients in a separate bowl.

4) Cut out the hard part of the central spine from a leaf of cabbage and place 1/4 of stuffing in the middle. Roll it up:

5) Place your cabbage rolls in your pressure cooker:

6) Chop up the remaining cabbage, add it to the sauce mixture, and pour over the cabbages.

7) Close and lock the lid. Cook at 15 lbs of pressure for 10 minutes. (For a refresher on pressure cooker basics, see this post.) Let the pressure drop of its own accord.

You’ll be eating it for days. It’s shockingly filling but utterly delicious.

This is less a “recipe” than a conglomeration of internet advice, including surprisingly good cooking instructions from Wikipedia. Is there anything Wikipedia can’t answer?

Crockpot Bigos

1 head cabbage, shredded
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot (or more, if you have them), chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pound bacon, cut into small pieces
1 lb pork steaks, cut into chunks
1 lb hot sausage or kielbasa, cut into 1-2 inch pieces
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper, as you see fit

1) Fry the bacon for a few minutes. Don’t cook it until it’s done; you just want to release enough fat to saute the onions. Then saute the onions and garlic just until the onions are translucent. Transfer to a crockpot.

2) Add the following, in order, to the crockpot: carrot, cabbage, remaining meat and cabbage. Tuck the bay leaf in there somewhere.

3) Cook on high 6-8 hours. You’ll need to stir it a few times to work the cabbage down.

Serve with potatoes (gluten free!) or egg noodles (not gluten free).

Lessons Learned…

It’s not entirely clear that it was appropriate to put this much food in the crockpot. That’s a whole lot of raw meat up there, just sitting there while the slow cooker heats up. This is why I used high: I got scared. But then, because I didn’t trust it, I opened the lid several times to try to stir in the meats, which sort of defeats the purpose of the crockpot. If you’re working with a similarly sized crockpot and cabbage, you might want to saute the cabbage a bit, just so that it fits more easily into the crockpot. In the end, no one got food poisoning and it tasted fantastic, but if I were to make this again I’d probably dump it all in my giant pressure cooker, add a couple of cups of water, and cook it at pressure 12 minutes or so. I bet it’s just as delicious, and certainly not as worrisome.

The other lesson is more reassuring. Note that I did not brown the sausage or the pork shoulder, and it still tasted great. Save yourself the trouble and just toss it in.