Lazy cabbage rolls: the same ingredients, layered in a dish, an hour in the oven
Everything that goes into gołąbki — blanched cabbage, a pork and rice filling, tomato sauce — only layered in a dish instead of rolled into leaves. The most laborious hour disappears and the flavour stays. It bakes covered, so steam softens the cabbage, and uncovered for the last quarter of an hour so the top browns.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Cabbage 15 min
- Filling 25 min
- Baking 75 min
- Resting 15 min
Step by step
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Shred and blanch the cabbage
Shred the cabbage into 5 mm ribbons. Drop into a large pot of salted boiling water and cook 5 minutes, until limp but still springy. Drain and keep the water — it replaces the stock in the sauce.
Ingredients: 800 g white cabbage · 1 tbsp salt
TipFive minutes, no more. Blanching removes the raw sulphurous bite and shrinks the cabbage noticeably, so it fits the dish. Boiled longer it collapses into threads in the oven and the layers stop holding together.
5 mm ribbons, five minutes in boiling water
Cook the rice halfway
Boil the rice in salted water for exactly 10 minutes — soft outside and clearly hard in the centre of the grain. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
Ingredients: 600 g minced pork · 150 g white rice · 2 pcs onions · 2 tbsp oil · 1 pcs egg · 1 tbsp dried marjoram · 2 tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
TipFully cooked rice breaks down into glue in the oven and binds the filling into one solid mass. Raw rice drinks most of the sauce out of the dish over the hour, leaving the bake dry. Half-cooked, it finishes alongside the meat and absorbs only as much liquid as it should.
Ten minutes: soft outside, hard at the centre
Make the filling
Dice the onion finely and soften it in the oil 8 minutes, until golden; let it cool. Work the meat by hand with the rice, onion, egg, marjoram crushed between your palms, salt and pepper, until the mixture is even and slightly tacky.
TipThe onion must cool before it meets the meat. Hot, it sets the protein on the surface of the mince and the filling turns grainy instead of cohesive.
Worked by hand, even and tacky
Build the layers
Heat the oven to 180 °C. Spread half the cabbage evenly in the dish. Put all the filling on top and press it out to the edges with your fingers, leaving no mounds. Cover with the rest of the cabbage and press down lightly.
Cabbage, filling spread flat, cabbage
Pour over the sauce
Mix the passata with the stock (or cabbage water), tomato paste, sugar, salt and pepper. Pour it in so the liquid reaches the top layer of cabbage without drowning it. Push in the bay leaves and allspice.
Ingredients: 500 ml tomato passata · 300 ml stock · 1 tbsp tomato paste · 1 tsp sugar · 2 pcs bay leaves · 3 pcs allspice berries · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
TipThe sugar isn't there to sweeten the sauce but to soften the acidity of the tomatoes, which becomes more pronounced over a long bake. A teaspoon per half litre is enough and cannot be tasted.
Sauce level with the top layer of cabbage
Bake covered
Cover the dish tightly with a lid or foil and bake 60 minutes at 180 °C.
TipThe cover does two things at once: it traps the steam that softens the cabbage to silk, and it holds in the moisture that keeps the mince from drying out. Uncovered, after an hour you would have a dry top and hard cabbage underneath.
Tightly covered, an hour at 180 °CUncover, finish and rest
Take the cover off and bake another 15 minutes, until the top browns and the sauce thickens at the edges. Take it out and leave 15 minutes — only then do the layers hold and can be served in squares rather than spooned. Serve with a dollop of sour cream, and potatoes or bread on the side.
A quarter hour uncovered, a quarter hour resting
Before you start
With buckwheat
150 g buckwheat boiled 6 minutes instead of rice: a more assertive flavour. Buckwheat also makes an easy meat-free version — replace the mince with 600 g mushrooms, chopped and fried until their water has gone.
With sauerkraut
Half fresh cabbage, half squeezed sauerkraut: sharper, closer to bigos. Then skip the salt in the blanching water and add one more teaspoon of sugar to the sauce.
For the freezer
Assemble completely, sauce included, without baking and freeze in the dish (up to 3 months). Thaw overnight in the fridge, then bake as in the recipe, adding about 15 minutes to the covered stage. Never put a frozen ceramic dish into a hot oven — it can crack.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
