Patricia Johns

Every family has a different cabbage roll recipe because every family makes them to their own taste. So when your grandmother passes down a recipe to you, it’s a sacred thing.

This recipe did not come from my Mennonite grandmother, although my dad did learn how to make cabbage rolls from her. This recipe is a combination of my dad’s cabbage roll recipe (which is vegetarian, because he became a vegetarian in the early 80’s, much to his family’s shock and dismay), and the tweaks I made to make them according to my own taste.

Ingredients:

Filling:

4 cups of cooked white rice
2 medium chopped onions
1 can of chick peas
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp salt
1 squirt of lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
A whole whack of chopped greens of your choice (spinach, collard greens, beat greens… whatever you have on hand!) The more the better, in my opinion, but how much you use is up to you.

Cabbage leaves:

Cut the core out of a whole head of cabbage, then boil the head in a big pot of water. As the leaves cook and loosen, pull them off and lay them on a plate to cool. Do this until the entire head has been used up.

Tomato sauce

2 cans crushed tomatoes
5-6 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 cloves garlic
1/2-3/4 can of water
1/2 cup oil
1 tbsp salt

Directions:

For the filling:

Blend together the can of chick peas, garlic, salt and lemon juice. When it is smooth, add it to the rice in a very large bowl. Then add all the other ingredients for the filling and mix it together well.

To make the rolls:

Add a heaping spoonful into a cabbage leaf and wrap it up so that the filling is held in the leaf, and lay the cabbage roll into a pan.

The sauce:

Cook up the ingredients for the tomato sauce in a pot, or your instant pot, or even better–just open a jar or can of ready made tomato sauce. It’ll do the trick!

To put it all together:

Once all your cabbage leaves have been filled, cover the cabbage rolls with tomato sauce completely–a lot of the liquid will cook off in the oven, so be generous. Cover your rolls until there is about a centimetre left in the pan. Then cover the top of your cabbage rolls with any leftover pieces of leaves. This just protects your rolls from burning or drying out on top. Then cover your pans with tin foil and pop them into the oven.

Bake at 375F for 2 hours.

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If you enjoy your romance novels with delicious food, close family connections, heartrending love stories, and all the comforts of a rural, Amish life, then check out my books! Maybe you’ll find your next read!

Happy reading!

❤