Stuffed Cabbage "Un-Rolls" Recipe (2024)

I remember back when I cooked a decent amount from scratch but didn’t know “real food” from “boxed and canned food,” I used to think of stuffed pasta shells as a “fancy meal” because of all the steps – boiling the noodles, making the sauce, mixing up the filling and taking the time to fill each shell. Lasagna was up there on the “high maintenance” list as well, with all those layers.

In our family’s current real food landscape (making nearly everything from scratch, from homemade mayo and crackers to yogurt and dressings) and with the number of mouths we have to fill (five), it takes me as long to chop vegetables for ANY given meal as it used to take to assemble two whole pans of stuffed shells – so my perspective on what makes a meal “a lot of work” has changed significantly.

But that doesn’t mean I’m looking for opportunities to spend even a second longer than I need to in the kitchen. On the contrary, I relish taking shortcuts as much as possible, and those meals that have four stages and three pots?

Forget it. I don’t want to mess with all that!

That’s why I am particularly excited to share this recipe with you today, because I’ve saved time on at least four different steps. Check THAT off the to-do list, baby!

The Story of the Cabbage Rolls

A year ago I was excited to try my hand at “stuffed cabbage rolls” for St. Patrick’s Day. They’re kind of a traditional thing that I knew my husband, kids and in-laws would all enjoy. Ground beef and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves and smothered in tomato sauce – what’s not to like? I set to work scanning the Internet for recipes to pull the best parts of many together into my own.

After steaming a cabbage, making a homemade sauce, and mixing up raw ground beef, cooked rice and seasonings, I still had to form each roll individually (while learning that 10 minutes probably wasn’t long enough to steam a whole head of cabbage) and arrange them in a casserole dish. One full hour in the oven wasn’t quite long enough to move the cabbage out of the “crunchy” category, so although the meal ended up rather tasty, I was less than thrilled with the overall experience. (But don’t worry, I fixed it right up!)

Thinking Outside the Roll

I’m always looking for faster, easier ways to get the same taste – in my eBook Better Than a Box I have a whole section teaching how to make many complicated meals into one-pot wonders, and I love doing it.

With this rolled-up meal, I brainstormed first about breaking the rolls out of their packaging – could the same taste be attained by layering sauce, meat and cabbage more like a lasagna instead of spending all that time rolling them up?

Then I wondered more about the crunchy cabbage – wouldn’t it be easier to jam the whole deal into a crockpot, which would certainly fully cook the cabbage over a span of 8 hours?

It is, and it does.

I present to you the super simple, slow cooker version of “Stuffed Cabbage Rolls,” which in good conscience I must call “Stuffed Cabbage Un-Rolls” because I skipped the rolling part.

I just layered it — sauce, raw cabbage, then raw meat mixture:

…Repeated, in a slow cooker. Simple, simple, simple.

See Also

Healthy Tailgating RecipesLemonade Layer Cake RecipeSkillet Scalloped Potatoes (Au Gratin) RecipeHealthier Slow Cooker Beef Stew Recipe

On the final test run, it took me 17 minutes to put together from start to finish, including putting away supplies, two trips to the basem*nt to get things, refilling my dried onion container and running to the computer in another room at least twice to take notes.

I’m not always the most efficient cook…so if I can do it in 17 minutes, you can do it in less!

(Then I almost forgot to turn the slow cooker on for the 4-hour test! Gah!! Don’t forget that part; it won’t turn out. EDIT: Or you can do it in under and hour in an Instant Pot, I discovered!! See recipe for details.)

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Recipe inspired by the seasonings at cooks.com, food.com, and recipe.com.

The slow cooker method is far superior to the old way of cabbage rolling because it saves so much time! You get to avoid:

1. Steaming the cabbage.
2. Cooking sauce.
3. Rolling cabbage rolls.
4. Plus most slow cooker recipes that call for beef and onion direct you to brown the beef first and maybe add the onion. Why bother? The meat gets cooked just fine and I can’t imagine taking the extra time and dirtying an extra pot to brown it first. This is a totally simple meal!

Now I’m wondering if we could just mix all the spices, meat, and sauce ingredients together! It may not make a difference once it all gets mashed up in the slow cooker anyway…

Pssst! If you are a slow cooker fan, I just have to share my ultimate favorite slow cooker cookbook with you. Like, seriously all my slow cooker recipes come from this book ONLY except for the cabbage un-rolls. They’re super kid-friendly, use ingredients I have on hand, take 15 minutes or less to throw together and are just good, normal food. Plus, Stacy is hilarious, and everybody could use a laugh in the kitchen now and then. Check out Crock On! for only five bucks. It will pay you back in time saved within a month, guaranteed.

If you just love the rolls (or don’t like the “well-cooked” flavor that happens with slow cookers) you could go the other route as follows…

The Rolling Way

If you really love the idea of little rolls and can’t let that go, here’s how I made it “casserole style” last year.

1. Prepare the cabbage.

Wash and cut the core out of the cabbage. In a large pot, steam cabbage for 10 minutes. Run under water briefly to cool enough to touch, then begin to peel the leaves off one by one. When you reach the point where they are no longer soft, put back into the steamer another 5 minutes, repeating as necessary. Cool again and take apart all the leaves. (I only did ten minutes total and it wasn’t enough):

2. Make the beef filling.

Crush garlic. Melt fat and cook the onions 5-10 minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently (if you have the time, you can use the same pot you just steamed the cabbage in once you’ve removed it). Add the garlic for the last minute. Put half the garlic and onions into a bowl with the ground meat, rice, paprika, fennel, ½ teaspoon thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and allspice. Mix gently; feel free to use your hands.

3. Make the tomato sauce.

In the skillet with the other half of the onions and garlic, add the tomato sauce, paste, and diced tomatoes, 1/2 tsp. salt, molasses, ½ teaspoon thyme, oregano, and cayenne. Bring to a low boil and reduce heat to a simmer for 15 minutes or more.

4. Make the rolls.

Place 2-3 Tbs. meat mix on each cabbage leaf, fold over, and roll up. Put a layer of sauce on the bottom of a 9×13 casserole dish and place a single layer of rolls on top of that.

5. Cover with the remaining sauce, and bake at 350F for at least an hour and 15 minutes, maybe more!

Watch for the edges to dry out though; you may even want to make a bit more sauce, even though this amount is ample for the slow cooker version. This is a photo of one of the most moist rolls, and you can still see a little brown singe on the edges (and it needed a longer cooking time!):

I also think you could roll up the cabbage rolls and arrange in a slow cooker to have the best of both worlds, the cute rolls and the easy cooking time. You would still need to steam the cabbage, but I think you could get away with not pre-cooking the sauce since it will cook for a long time in the crockpot.

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