Christmas Eve Cabbage Rolls Recipe

The ultimate comfort food, my mom's cabbage rolls are always a welcome sight and smell at holiday gatherings. 

This past September, we visited Hartville flea market and she got a huge head of cabbage from the farmers market there, and later that week, she had a to-go container of cabbage rolls for me to take home. It worked out perfectly, because little did she know I had already started compiling Granite, my cookbook of family recipes that I gave my family members for Christmas. Of course, cabbage rolls were in there, and she saved me from having to make a whole recipe just for photos! 

I'd already looked through her recipes and jotted down the cabbage rolls recipe that was in there, but when I tasted the ones she sent home with me, I noticed the sauce seemed a little different from what the recipe said. I remember helping her make them in the past, so along with that and my tastebuds, I tried to make the recipe as close as possible to match the sweet and savory tomato sauce to smother the rolls.

Also I copied in the recipe from my book and just realized I wrote "untrained rice" instead of "undrained rice." Cooooool. I fixed it here, but unfortunately Barnes & Noble Press is super backed up and I had to place my order weeks before I was planning on it, and didn't have time to even get my first draft back to check it over and make sure everything looks okay. As I write this, it's December 5 and I placed the order yesterday morning for the final copies with expedited shipping, and I'm slightly freaking out that I'm not going to get them in time. I ordered my first draft on November 23 and it still hasn't shipped. Lol. LOL. I'm fine. Everything's FINE. 

Hopefully by the time I publish this blog after Christmas, this will be a distant memory and my family members will all be sitting there reading about untrained rice on Christmas Eve while visions of sugarplums dance in their heads. 

Mom's Christmas Eve Cabbage Rolls
Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Makes 18 rolls

Ingredients

1 head cabbage (2 lb.)
6 tablespoons butter
3 large onions, chopped
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Rice
1 cup long grain rice
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter

Sauce
2 (8 oz.) cans tomato sauce
15 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 350˚. Remove core from cabbage head. Boil cored head, removing leaves as they soften. Trim the thick outer vein from each leaf (should be about 18 leaves).

Melt butter in a large skillet and add chopped onion; cook until translucent. Meanwhile, make the rice: in a medium saucepan, bring 2 cups water to a boil with salt and butter. Add rice, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 10 minutes (rice will be par-cooked).

Mix raw beef, pork, cooked onion, undrained rice, eggs, salt and pepper. Place ⅓ cup meat mixture on each cabbage leaf; roll up securely, and tuck ends under.

Mix together all sauce ingredients, and spread a thin layer in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Arrange rolls over top, then pour remaining sauce over everything. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 2 hours. Let rest 15 minutes before serving.