What’s for dinner at your house tonight? Finding it hard to come up with something to do with leftovers? This recipe for stuffed cabbage rolls is a great way to use up leftover beef, gravy and rice. I had forgotten about this recipe until I realized that I had a nice head of cabbage as well as leftover beef and rice. Check your other leftovers! A lot of things can be added to this recipe. I will give you the recipe as taken from my Fannie Farmer cookbook, but will also tell you what I did to change it to meet my needs tonight!
8 large cabbage leaves
1 large onion, chopped
4 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. paprika
2 c. minced cooked beef or pork (hamburger or sausage works great, too. I combined beef, hamburger, and sausage!)
2 c. cooked rice
1/4 c. parsley
1/2 tsp. rosemary
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste (I also added a sprinkling of red pepper)
3/4 c. gravy
16 oz. can tomatoes
Boil water in a large pot. Add cabbage leaves and cook for about 3-4 minutes. Carefully lift out the leaves and let drain on a towel. (I did this in 2 batches.)
Cut a small V out of the root end to remove the hard spine of the leaves. Saute onions in butter until soft. If you need to brown any ground beef, do it at this time in the same pan with the onions. (Since this is what I did, I could omit the butter and let the onion cook with the meat.) Drain off any fat. Add seasonings, rice and gravy. (I also added 1/2 tsp. minced garlic.) Stir well to combine all these ingredients. Spoon about 1/8 of the mixture on each of the cabbage leaves. Fold in sides and roll to make a neat sausage-shaped package. Place seam-side down in a greased baking pan. Pour tomatoes with sauce over the rolls.
Cover lightly with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.
The Cookbook Experiment 