Did you know that before the potato becamea widely consumed product, was cabbage just a “people's breadwinner”? Therefore, it is now called the "queen of the garden." Previously, skitters occupied huge acreage. Delicious green heads of cabbage went to soup and salads. In winter, people enjoyed eating sour cabbage with pleasure. Later, the Russian people became acquainted with other types of this vegetable. Beijing, Brussels, broccoli, cauliflower - all these varieties of cabbage are very tasty. But the white-skinned “queen of the vegetable garden” still reigns in the Slavic cuisine.
In this article we will consider only one way tocooking, namely - stewing. Do you think that a modest everyday meal will come out? You are mistaken. Young, ripe and fermented; with sausages, pork, chicken; with wine, tomato sauce or cream - do not count the stewed cabbage recipes. Very tasty this vegetable will be combined with potatoes. So you can stew cabbage at least every day and every time to get a new dish.
Basics of the culinary process
This vegetable is good because it has its own taste,as well as incorporates the flavor of spices and related products. You can stew cabbage, both fresh and sour. Below we take a look at the individual recipes. Braised cabbage, however, requires advance preparation. What is it?
Fresh heads must be harvested from the top hardleaves (otherwise it will be inedible), then cut into four pieces and remove the stalk. The rest of the cabbage should be chopped into strips. You can slightly wrinkle it with your hands to make it stand out. With sauerkraut should do otherwise. First, it is already shredded. We will simply sort it out, removing peppercorns and cutting very large pieces. To extinguish choose not very sour cabbage. Of course, you can adjust the taste by soaking the product in water. But along with excessive acidity, vitamin C will also go away, and the quality of the finished dish will deteriorate. If you do not want to get at the output of tasteless seaweed, as in the factory canteen, choose quality sauerkraut. Now turn to cooking.
Step-by-step recipe for stewed cabbage
We need a cauldron, preferably bulk.Even if you cook a small amount of stewed cabbage from a fresh head of cabbage, the chopped straw will take a lot of space in the pan. Then it will "settle", will be reduced in volume by three to four times. But first you need to cabbage climbed into the cauldron entirely. We take the average head out, weighing one and a half kilograms. The classic recipe for stewed cabbage recommends giving preference to late varieties that are harvested in the fall, with the onset of frost. Such cabbages are crispy, and they have a lot of vitamins.
So step one.We cut the cabbage, slicing it is not too large, but not too thin straw. For a heading weighing one and a half kilograms you need to take three onions. We clean them and chop thin half rings. Go to the next step. We put a cauldron on the fire, pour vegetable oil into it. When the fat is hot, fry the onions to a golden hue. Then add to the cauldron 50-70 grams of tomato paste. But if you like more fresh braised cabbage, you can skip this step. Now we enter into the cauldron the heads of cabbage cut. Mix and immediately add a half to two glasses of hot boiled water. We are waiting for it to boil. We proceed to the next stage - we reduce the fire and cover the cauldron. From time to time we interfere with the dish so as not to burn it. If necessary, add water. After half an hour of stewing, cabbage should be salted and spices should be added to the dish (a mixture of peppers, coriander, nutmeg). We continue to cook until soft vegetable.
Sausage
In Slavic cuisine stewed cabbagemostly cooked with meat. But if you do not want to mess around for a long time with butchering pork or beef, you can use sausage. With boiled, smoked, and jerked - choose at your discretion various recipes. Very tasty stewed cabbage is obtained with sausages or wieners. These sausages remain juicy and harmoniously harmonize with the main ingredient of the dish.
Cut vegetables first:a head of cabbage - straws, two large onions - thin half-rings, and one carrot stew. Now we proceed to the heat treatment of products. As in the vegetarian version, heat up the vegetable oil in the cauldron. Pass the bow. When it becomes golden, add carrots, and after two minutes - cabbage. Stir and pour a glass of boiling water. We lower the lid and simmer the vegetables on a small fire. Three hundred grams of boiled sausage (wieners or sausages) cut into arbitrary pieces. Fry in a pan until golden brown. Add sausages in the pot when the vegetables are soft. And in the pan, in the butter, which sausages were fried, lay out a hundred grams of tomato paste. Stir for a minute. We shift to the pot. Salt the dish, season with pepper and bay leaf. Stew another five minutes.
Fast cooking method
As you can see, the recipe for braised cabbage with sausagespretty simple. But there is an even faster way to cook this dish. For this we need only a frying pan with high sides. Rub two carrots and chop the cabbage into small strips. Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a pan (only it does not change when heated and does not emit carcinogenic substances). Putting carrots and cabbage. Cover the pan and fry over high heat, stirring often enough to prevent the vegetables from burning. When the cabbage becomes golden, reduce the heat. Pour half a glass of boiling water. Three hundred grams of sausages (or boiled sausage) cut. Add to the cabbage stew in a pan. The recipe recommends that you immediately salt the dish and throw seasonings. After that, you need to put out another ten minutes. During this time, we wash a small bunch of dill and we finely weed it. Turn off the fire under the skillet and sprinkle the dish with fresh herbs.
With Chiken
Мясо птицы готовится быстро, и с ним не возникает hassle. Chicken has a neutral taste, and, moreover, it goes well with fresh cabbage, while pork - with sour. For the dish, you can take different parts of the carcass - breast, legs, wings, legs. But the recipe for braised cabbage with chicken obliges us to first mill the meat. This means that we must separate it from the bones and, if possible, from the skin.
A pound of fillet cut into pieces along the fibers.Two onions chop finely. Fry until golden brown in vegetable oil in a cauldron. Put the meat. Fry for about five minutes, until the pieces turn white on all sides. Only now the recipe for stewed cabbage with meat allows us to add a shredded head to the cauldron (weighing a kilogram or a little more). Stir, cover and fry for about 20 minutes. It is necessary to keep a kettle with boiling water on hand to pour hot water in case of cabbage sticking. Then add a few tablespoons of tomato paste, salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and simmer another 20 minutes under the lid.
With mushrooms
We shred straw large head of cabbage.First, in a few tricks, fry it in a pan. The recipe for stewed cabbage with mushrooms offers to cook the dish in the oven. Therefore, we first fry vegetables, and then we shift them to a cauldron or on a baking sheet with high walls. Four shreds bulbs. A pound of carrots three. Fry the onion. Add carrots and a little sweat in the pan. Move to cabbage. On a dry frying pan lay out a pound of peeled and coarsely chopped mushrooms. When they put the juice in, we decant the cauldron. Add vegetable oil and fry the mushrooms. Also move them to the pot. We add there three spoons of tomato paste, two glasses of boiling water. We put in the oven heated to 200 degrees. Stew until done. Sometimes you need to open the oven door and check the condition of the dish. If the water has evaporated, the stewed cabbage recipe recommends adding boiling water to prevent the vegetables from burning.
With prunes
Dried fruits (especially if you buy smoked)Give the dish flavor and smoke. A glass of prunes first need to pour boiling water so that it swells and becomes soft. In ten minutes we will merge the water, and remove the bones. We take as a basis the recipe for braised cabbage with sausages, but you can make a dish with chicken or completely vegetarian. First, in the cauldron fry the meat, then add the shredded finely onion. When she zazolotitsya, add carrots grated with large chips and chopped cabbage. Fill a glass of boiling water and simmer for a quarter of an hour under the lid. Add prunes and two spoons of tomato paste. Stir, pour still incomplete glass of boiling water. Season the dish with spices and salt. We continue to simmer under the lid for about a quarter of an hour.
With potatoes
If you cook cabbage with meat, then to thisdish should be served some side dish. Why not cook everything together? Especially for this case, and coined a recipe for braised cabbage with potatoes. First, fry until golden brown pork with spices. We shift the meat in the cauldron. His place in the pan is occupied by onions and carrots. Fry 5 minutes and also shift to the cauldron. Fill with 300 ml of boiling water, simmer under the lid for 20 minutes. Fry in chopped cabbage forks in vegetable oil. When the vegetable becomes a bronze shade, add 2 spoons of tomato paste. After 5 minutes, send the contents of the pan to the cauldron. Fry until fully cooked 5 chopped potatoes. We shift to the cabbage. Simmer another 10 minutes, and then insist the dish is covered with another quarter of an hour.
How to cook sauerkraut
The sour hue of this snack is perfect.combined with fatty meat. But there are also vegetarian stew sauerkraut recipes. Here is one of them - with cumin. Three onions finely chop. Fry lightly in olive oil until soft. Carrots - 600 grams - shabby. This puree add to the onions. Sweat some vegetables on a small fire under the lid. Now we will enter about a kilo of sauerkraut into the dish. Immediately pour water. The liquid must completely cover the vegetables. After half an hour of quenching, add two teaspoons of cumin, pepper, and dolim if necessary. Ten minutes before readiness, the stewed cabbage recipe prescribes to pour a teaspoon of cumin into the cabbage.
Some people do not tolerate the peculiar smell of heated sauerkraut. To neutralize it, put in a cauldron a crust of rye bread. When the dish is ready, discard the slice.
Bigos
According to one version, this recipe is delicious stewthe cabbage was coined in Poland; according to another, it was taken out of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by King Vladislav Jagailo (14th century). Now a dish called “bigos”, “bigus” and Beiguss are prepared in vast territories from Belarus and Ukraine to Germany. And in Poland and Lithuania there are as many recipes for tasty stewed cabbage as there are in Russia for cooking soup. Bigos can be made with hunting sausages, game, pork subcap. Mushrooms, red wine, tomato paste, prunes are added to the dish. But Bigos has one rule. For the dish is taken a mixture of fresh and sauerkraut. Ingredients are prepared separately. Cabbage is stewed, and other vegetables and meat are fried in a pan. They are mixed at the very end. Let's now take a closer look at the recipe for the classic Polish bigos.
Dish, sung by Mitskevich
Может, рецепт тушеной капусты с мясом и родился в Lithuania. But only the Poles gave the Bigos refinement and charm. And all because the meat in the "right" dish should be three kinds. Take raw pork 300 g and 150 g of smoked sausage and sausages. Put a kilogram of sauerkraut into a large cauldron, pour 300 ml of water and set stew. Meanwhile, in the pork lard we fry three chopped onions. Add chopped large pork. Fry until ruddy meat. A small head of fresh cabbage we cut straws. Boil the mushrooms, filter the broth. Add to sauerkraut fresh, continue to stew for half an hour. We cut smoked meats and sausages. When the fresh cabbage is no longer crunching, we add to the cauldron three types of meat, onions, seasonings, a glass of wine, mushrooms and broth in which they were cooked. Stew all this for two more hours on a small fire under the lid.
Reviews
Cooks love to apply a variety of recipes.stewed cabbage. After all, they can be modified according to their taste preferences. For example, add sour cream sauce to an almost finished dish. In the reviews, readers argue that it will be very tasty if you warm up a couple of tablespoons of flour in a dry frying pan to pink. After that you can add it to the cabbage. Then the dish will get velvety structured taste. Many cooks advise instead of water to pour in wine or broth - so the dish will come out more fragrant. In short, do not be afraid to experiment with cabbage. In the reviews, it is noted that dishes from it, although they are cooked for a long time, but they do not require constant attention from the chef.
