Cabbage rolls evoke memories of our grandmothers’ kitchens and represent generations of family recipes from around the world. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, they won’t come out right. Oftentimes you can end up with stiff leaves that are tough and unpleasant to eat.
It helps to know that there are many types of cabbage, and they tend to be used a bit differently. Green cabbage, for example, has good-sized leaves that are great for rolling, but if you’ve got a nice savoy cabbage on your hands, you can take advantage of the large outer leaves and use those to wrap up a tasty filling (don’t bother with the inner leaves which won’t work as well).
The core of the cabbage is the toughest. It’s where the flesh is the thickest and takes longer to cook through than the rest of the leaf. If you don’t remove it, you’ll have a tough time wrapping the leaf and you won’t get an even cook on the roll. For this reason, it’s best to cut away this part of the leaves before you use them. The next step is crucial to breaking up the cellulose in the leaves, a complex carbohydrate that is responsible for the natural stiffness. Drop the leaves in boiling water to soften them up and give them a head start on the cooking process so your rolls won’t be tough once they come out of the oven.
It’s never too late to fix a tough cabbage problem
Cabbage rolls show up in cuisines from around the world, typically featuring a filling of rice mixed with ground beef or pork and drenched in a variety of sauces. Greek cuisine, for example, where cabbage rolls are known lahanodolmades, features a delicate lemon sauce, while in Italy the filling typically consists of Italian sausage and potatoes. In Ukraine, cabbage rolls are called holubsti and are served as part of a traditional “Holy Dinner” at Christmastime.
Whether you follow the recipe for one of these traditional versions of the dish or make it your own by doing something creative, like substituting quinoa or cauliflower for the rice in the filling, you’ll find that even when you do everything right, things can still go wrong. So if you’ve cooked one of the many cabbage roll dishes, like Hungarian style töltött káposzta, which has bacon in the filling, a tomato-based sauce, and a smoky paprika flavor, and you discover the leaves are tough despite choosing the right ones and doing the prep work, the solution is simple. Back in the oven they go. Cooking cabbage rolls takes a surprisingly long time — anywhere from 1½ to 2½ hours. After all, they are stuffed full of dense filling and wrapped up tight, so, if they’re still stiff, they may just be undercooked.
