I’ve created a super-fancy gołąbki that has the same flavor profile as my grandmother’s – in other words, one that is in keeping with the traditional version – but with more nuance.

Makes 16 cabbage rolls, serving 8-16 people

For the sauce:

3-6 cloves garlic
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
3 Tbs butter
Salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes
1 can (28 oz.) whole plum tomatoes, crushed by hand
1 Tbs lemon juice
Freshly-ground black pepper

1. Heat a 12-inch cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, pulse garlic in a food processor. Add onions (in batches, perhaps) and pulse until finely chopped. Add butter to the skillet, and once it’s melted, add the onion mixture. Season with salt, to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the pepper flakes, and continue to cook, stirring constantly, for 10 seconds. Add both cans of tomatoes and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes. Set aside.

My typical-sized food processor won’t chop and entire onion all at once without turning some of it to mush, while at the same time leaving large, un-chopped pieces. Because of that, I process about a quarter at a time.

What to do with the rest of the lemon you squeezed for this sauce? Pour some of it into the home-brewed ice tea that you have chilling in the fridge, but save just a tiny bit to splash into a glass of sparkling water that you can drink while you’re cooking.

Why both crushed and whole tomatoes? Texture: just the right amount of chunky. Adjust to suit your tastes. To crush tomatoes by hand, you’ll need to pour them into a large mixing bowl, grab the tomatoes one at a time in your palm, make sure your hand is fully submerged in the liquid, and then crush your frustrations away.

Don’t be shy with the salt. The sauce will need a good deal of it. Do be careful with the pepper: the sauce isn’t meant to have an outright spiciness, and remember that the cabbage will lend its own pepperiness. Here’s a tip for taste-testing a hot sauce: move a small teaspoon of it from the pot to a ceramic coffee cup. Stir it in the cup a few seconds. This will quickly reduce its temperature so that you can taste it.  

For the filling:

1 cup long-grain white rice
1 large head of cabbage
1 lb. ground chuck
1 lb. ground pork
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
3/4 cup parsley, chopped
1 large egg
2 tsp Worcestershire
2 mounded tsp coarse salt
1 cup sauerkraut, drained (optional)
Sour cream, for serving (optional)

1. Place rice along with 2 cups of water into a saucepot. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Drain the rice. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

Many recipes called for uncooked rice. Uncooked rice will expand, and may cause the golumpki (that’s the anglicized version of the word) to burst while they’re cooking. Other recipes called for fully-cooked rice; by the time the golumpki are cooked, that rice will be overcooked and mushy. My favorite way to drain the rice: place a spatter guard over the pot and invert.

2. To prepare the filling, use your hands to mix the beef, pork, onion, parsley, egg, Worcestershire, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the cooked rice.

If you’re multitasking this, and you find yourself with cooked rice, but the filling isn’t ready to be mixed yet, go ahead and mix the rice with the cold meat and then set it aside until you’re ready to proceed. You don’t want the rice to cool prior to mixing, otherwise it will stick together and be difficult to mix into the filling.

3. Place the cabbage into a large pot, stem side up. Fill the pot with water until the cabbage starts to float. Cover and cook over high heat. Once the water is hot enough to begin to soften the cabbage (this will happen before the water begins to simmer), use a chef’s knife and a serving fork to slice through the outer leaves, severing them at the point where the leaf meets core. Use the knife and fork to gently pry one of the leaves away from the cabbage. Place the leaf on a cutting board and make a shallow, V-shaped cut to remove the toughest part of the stem. Place about 1/3 cup of filling into the leaf and roll it, starting from the stem end, the way you would a burrito. Place the golumpki on a plate or in a large bowl and continue making more of them.

The tough part of the stem will prevent you from getting a nice, neat roll. If you remove too much of it, though, you won’t be able to roll the leaf without having exposed filling. So, cut away as much as you dare, but no more than you must. As you work your way through the leaves, you’ll get a feel for this. None of the filling should be exposed once the cabbage is rolled.  

As you remove the outer leaves and make golumpki out of them, the cabbage continues to cook and the next leaves will be ready when you need them. 

The outermost leaves, because they’re larger, can accommodate a lot more than 1/3-cup of filling. Smaller leaves will accommodate less. It’s normal for the golumpki to vary in size.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove enough more leaves from the cabbage to line the bottom of a large, shallow baking pan. Re-purpose any remaining cabbage. Ladle some of the sauce onto the leaves, and spread it evenly. Nestle the golumpki into the pan. Ladle remaining sauce over the golumpki. (Spread sauerkraut over the top.) Cover the pan tightly with foil, and bake until the golumpki are so tender that you can slice through the cabbage with a spoon, 1½-2 hours. Serve piping hot (with sour cream).

My largest pan is 9x13x2.25-inches. I can fit about a dozen golumpki into it, so I place the remainder in an 8-inch baking dish. I place one dish on the oven’s middle rack, and one on the lower rack and I swap them halfway through the baking time. If you do something like this, know that the ones in the smaller dish will be ready a good half-hour before the others.

Taste the sauerkraut before using it. If it’s more intense than you’d like, rinse it. Sauerkraut, aside from adding a flavor kick, will increase the dish’s acidity. Omit it if you’d prefer something more neutral.

The process I’ve laid out is efficient, but other than that, there’s no reason you have to stick to it. You could start with any one of the components. Obviously, the more in-advance you make them, the more you’d want to store them in the fridge. The filling could remain there  maybe for a day; the leaves, maybe a few days; the sauce, several days. 

The backstory:

Don’t tell my relatives, because they’ll disown me if they find out, but I’ve created a golumpki better than my grandmother’s.

You would think that golumpki would be the launch pad for all sorts of variations: want to use brown rice? Add mushrooms? Carrots? Green peppers? I once did just two of those things, and my mom and aunts refused to eat them. They literally fed them to the dog. I’m not kidding. In this recipe, I’ve stayed close to tradition, while managing to find ways to elevate the dish: mainly, that consists of the homemade sauce – which is utterly stellar if I do say so myself – and finishing the golumpki in the oven rather than on the stovetop, because it’s gentler and offers you more control.

A tomato soup sauce is quite common, but my grandmother usually used tomato purée instead. This sauce has much more texture than a soup or purée, but it’s nonetheless light. In addition to that, the pork-beef combo (instead of straight-up beef) makes the filling lighter without sacrificing flavor. So, if these golumpki have a more interesting texture, they also have an overall delicacy to them that sets them apart from the bricks that some golumpki can be. My grandmother would die (again) if she knew that I turned out to be someone who would bake his golumpki, but I’ve managed to avoid the pitfalls: baked golumpki often wind up dry or with crisped cabbage, but these wind up baking while completely submerged in sauce.

Super-Fancy Gołąbki

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man!, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you, Kesor. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. My relatives aren’t aware that I’ve been toying with grandma’s golumpki recipe, so please don’t tell them about it or I might be banished. In preparing this post, I relied predominantly on my memories of making golumpki with grandma, which I bounced off of “Traditional Family Favorites,” by the St. Christopher Rosary Altar Society (my grandmother’s church ladies’ cookbook), for good measure. I also consulted BA, Cooks.com, Crumbly, Freda, and the fanciest descendant of any Pole, Martha Stewart. 

Keep up with us on Bloglovin’