Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Golumpki)

Around here they’re golumpki, or halupki, or just cabbage rolls, depending on whose grandmother taught you. Whatever you call them, this is what a head of cabbage and a couple pounds of good ground meat are for — a pan of them feeds a crowd on Sunday and reheats even better on Tuesday.

This is also the first recipe we’re posting with our friends at Ortman Farms in mind. Their ground pork and beef is what goes in ours — half and half is the way to go if you have both.

What you need

• 1 large head of cabbage
• 2 pounds ground pork, ground beef, or a mix
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 1 sweet onion, diced fine
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 egg
• Salt and plenty of black pepper
• For the sauce: about 3 pounds of canning tomatoes (or two quarts of the ones you put up), a spoonful of sugar, salt

How we do it

Cut the core out of the cabbage and set the whole head, core side down, in a big pot of simmering water. As the outer leaves soften, peel them off with tongs — you want 12 to 16 good leaves. Shave down the thick rib on each one with a knife so they roll without cracking.

Mix the meat, rice, onion, garlic, egg, salt, and pepper with your hands. Don’t overwork it. Put a fist-sized scoop on each leaf, fold in the sides, and roll it up snug.

For the sauce, chop the tomatoes and cook them down for 15 minutes with salt and a spoonful of sugar, then crush them with a spoon — rustic is correct. Ladle a little into the bottom of a Dutch oven or deep baking dish, pack the rolls in seam-side down, and pour the rest over top. Chop whatever cabbage is left and tuck it into the gaps — cook’s bonus.

Cover and bake at 350°F for about an hour and a half, until a fork goes through the cabbage with no argument. Let them sit 10 minutes before serving. They hold in a low oven for hours, which is why they show up at every church supper and funeral lunch in the county — they wait for you, not the other way around.

Photo: Steven Depolo, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.