Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls

This delicious and flavorful recipe for unstuffed cabbage rolls is on the lighter side. This recipe is so simple with all the satisfaction of those delicious cabbage rolls everyone loves!

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I know a lot of people jump on the bandwagon for the New Year, regardless of resolutions, after all the heaviness and richness of the holidays, I like to eat a little lighter for a while.

These unstuffed cabbage rolls are the perfect addition to a lighter fare meal rotation. I am a big fan of all things cabbage and mixed with the ground pork and tomatoes with the perfect seasoning blend, this meal is very satisfying.

Served over white rice, you get all the satisfaction of a stuffed cabbage roll with out all the hassles of rolling them up!

Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls Ingredients

Of course, there is meat in this recipe, but the real star here is the cabbage. You do not need anything fancy, just one head of regular fresh cabbage.

Now for the meat, this recipe is very flexible. I like to use regular ground pork, you can certainly use ground turkey, beef, or chicken.

The addition of apple cider vinegar really boosts the flavor of this recipe. It adds such a nice sour and tang and you get some of those great health benefits from the apple cider vinegar.

I use canned diced tomatoes, but you could certainly use fresh, you just may need to add a little more liquid to the recipe if you use fresh.

For the garlic, this is really a personal preference, we love garlic in this house, so I will use minced and powder, you can really use either or depending on your own love for the garlic!

I think adding just a touch of paprika adds such a nice sweet and peppery flavor. There are not many things I don’t add paprika too, and it really does a nice job adding to the flavor profile of this dish.

Putting it all together

You start by chopping the cabbage to nice bite size pieces, it will cook down, but you want it to be nicely diced before you start cooking it so it cooks down nicely.

Then you get the onion nicely diced. I love using kitchen gadgets, especially when it comes to onions because I seem to be very sensitive to them, so the quicker I can get them diced the better!

I think this is the perfect onion chopper make such quick work of dicing them up fast!

The nice thing about this recipe is the only prep work that you really need to do is chop up the onions and cabbage, other than that, it’s just throwing everything together in a big pot to cook down.

After I have the onions nice and soft, I add the ground pork and cook till fully browned. I then add in the cabbage and let that cook down for a while till it has reduced by at least half.

It is important to have a nice large stock pot due to the volume of the cabbage before it is cooked down. I love my set of Hexclad pans. The set I got came with this 8 quart Stock Pot it is perfect for larger recipes like this, chili, soup and more!

After I get the cabbage cooked down most the way I add in the rest of the ingredients and let it all meld together and cook down for at least 20 to 30 minutes on simmer.

I like my cabbage nice and soft, so I like to let this simmer for a while. This also allows the flavors to come together and cook the “canned” taste out of the diced tomatoes and puree.

Once this has cooked down to your liking, give it a taste and make sure your seasoning are just right. If you find that it is too sour, add just a touch of sugar to balance out the flavors.

I like to serve this over plain white rice to give the complete “stuffed cabbage” presentation. My recipe for easy oven white rice is the perfect addition to this recipe and is something you can have cooking in the oven while cooking the cabbage on the stove.