Golabki – My Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage
Hey! Happy to see you here! Today we are going to be talking food. Have you tried Stuffed Cabbage also known and called in Poland – Galabki yet? This dish brings soo many childhood memories that I am so happy to share with you. I am not really a food blogger but I do love to share what my Mom taught me . Got to admit that my Mom didn’t like to spend so much time in the kitchen but when she did she was just creating masterpieces. She was always opting out for quicker recipes .. the ones that didn’t take half a day of preparation… it is really like me ..lol. Thank Goodness that there were not many of those recipes. I am so excited to share with our family tradition … our polish traditional dinner.
Stuffed cabbage was usually served in my house as weekend dinner. Easy to make and delicious preheated. Golabki were also must have dish at bigger parties.
Ingredients needed to make Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage rolls
- 2 lb ground beef and ground pork mixed(meatloaf mix )
- cabbage
- tomato sauce … your favorite one
- Seasoning ..salt and pepper
- 1 TBS onion powder
- One whole egg
- 1 TBS sweet paprika
- cooked rice 1 cup
Let’s start prep work !
Boiling the head of cabbage
Cabbage leaves are hard and if you try to peel them off they’ll crack and or tear. You don’t want that. For these, you want luxurious full leaves. Everyone has their favorite method to remove the leaves. My Mom taught me to steam my cabbage so it separates easy so here is how we are doing it
- Fill a large stockpot with water and bring it to a boil.
- Then take a knife and remove the core.
- Carefully add the cabbage into the pot (USE TONGS and go slow!) and boil it for a few minutes checking the leaves.
- In stages, I will slowly pull off the leaves and place them in a colander to drain. Be gentle as you do not want to rip the leaves. This can take 3-10 minutes to do a whole head depending on the size of your cabbage.
Polish Traditional family dinner idea
As you can see I chose to use curly cabbage to make my golabki aka stuffed cabbage
All is separated …and now it is time to cool leaves and prep our meat
What other meats can you use in these stuffed cabbage rolls?
Mom used a meat mixture that was all ground beef or a mixture of ground beef and pork. I tend to personally like the addition of the ground pork as it gives the dish a bit more richness to it however you can totally go with all ground beef if you wish.
Mix all ingredients well.
Form a little ball and wrap into your cabbage leaf Just because my cabbage was small I am going to have lots of them. My goal was to choose biggest leaves
There are so many ways you can go around cooking stuffed cabbage. My Mom used to put them most of the time in the big roasting pan like the one below and bake them covered for 2 hours at 350 degrees most of the time. We also used nonstick skillet with cover to make them. It all depends on how many stuffed cabbage pieces you have. In the winter I like to use my slow cooker and cook on low so it is ready for dinner.
There is a way you like to layer to cook your stuffed cabbage no matter how you are going to cook them.
- spread thin your favorite tomato sauce at the bottom of your pan
- coat your bottom of pan with smaller unworkable leaves
- cover them with a bit of tomato sauce
- lay your rolled stuffed cabbage. They can be overlapped too if needed
- cover them with remainder of leaves
- coat all with tomato sauce
Easy cabbage dinner- polish traditional meal … family tradition
Cover and cook for 1.5 on low heat or until your leaves are soft but still crunchy. At least that is how I like them
Perfect easy cabbage dinner is ready. As you can see cabbage leaves changed a bit its color
Tasting time ..lol. All seamed to be tender!
My stuffed cabbage seemed to be smaller then usual but it still tastes the same. As with everything I used what I had at home. This time my cabbage dinner is made out of curly cabbage. We were not using it in our family tradition but I thought it was worthy to try
Check out this bite!! You can still see rice but not as much. I hope that my Mom will be happy that I am holding on to our family tradition.
Keto version
- replace your rice with cauliflower pieces
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Other Mom’s recipes on the blog
Simple No-Knead Bread recipe can be found HERE
This is maybe not my Mom’s recipe but it is Magda’s favorite! It is a must to make! Full recipe HERE
Absolutely delicious stuffed egg recipe that my Mom taught me can be found HERE
Learn my Mom’s way to cook perfect eggs HERE
if you feel craft check those diy’s below
Here is MacKenzie Childs Dollar Tree leaf makeover
Here is a book pages wreath inspired by my MOM
One Comment
Yvonne Smith
I love stuffed cabbage……….. do you put any of the tomato sauce in the meat mixture? Barbara Walters put out a recipe years ago that I still use sometimes and it is about the same….. but you add about a tablespoon of grape jeely to the tomato sauce. It doesn’t seem to make it sweet, it just takes the edge off the tomato sauce and seems to make it a little more mellow.