Hi, this is chef David Bishop From The Chef To You. Today I like to show you how to make
some simmered cabbage. We’ll start with a fresh head of cabbage. Little bit of dark green on the
outside. Let's take a look at our ingredients.
Like I said just a minute ago, we want a head of cabbage. With a little bit of dark green. We
don’t want the real deep, deep green because it’s going to be too bitter. We want a little of this
dark green for color and for flavor. We got some bacon fat, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper. We
got some water right here, we're going to be cooking it in. let's get started here.
I'm going to break off this two outer leaves, I can already see the darker color. You see now, I
got my typical green cabbage right here. I won’t start with this, I will set this out of the way. Cut
this down in the middle. Put them right on top of each other. Cut them down in the middle again.
I want to cut about a quarter or half inch strip. What we do here is we want to take this darker
cabbage, we're going to put it in a strainer. And we're going to wash this and set it aside and start
the rest of our cabbage.
Safety is very important when cutting your cabbage. Because its round, it can be dangerous. I'm
going to take and cut this root off to start with. Move that out of the way. Now I like to take a
sharp strong knife, start with the center. Kind of saw a little bit and then straight it down. Keep
your fingers out of the way. Now you see I have a half a cabbage, now we’ll take this knife and
go right down the center again. I'm going to turn it, take my knife, go on top of that root. Come
right underneath it and all in the root, I don’t leave anything else going. Set my knife down here
and let you see. All I did is cut the root out. Now what we're going to do is take this cabbage, cut
right down the center. Again, about a half inch, quarter to half inch slices. You can cut a larger
slices, but the person you serve is going to cut in on the plate. Now I don’t want my customers to
have to do that. I would cut the rest of this cabbage, I'm going to wash it and let's go to the pot.
We got our water boiling, cabbage draining right here. Let’s go ahead and add our flavorings and
our salt and pepper. 3 tablespoons of bacon fat. If you like, you can go ahead and do strictly lean,
fat back, brown off some bacon. Put the bacon and the bacon grease in there. Country ham, your
choice of what kind of meat you want to put in there. Now if you're a vegetarian, vegetable oil
would be fine, about 3 tablespoons.
Alright, we're going to put about half a teaspoon of salt to start with here. Half a teaspoon of
black pepper. Crush red pepper, we're going to bring about 2-3 good pinches in. we want a little
bit of a bite here, but we don’t want it too hot. We're going to bring this roll and boil and let it
cook for about 5 minutes.
I allow this to boil for a couple of minutes, my reason is, I want the flavor of this broth to be
good and rich. If I have my cabbage and the broth is not strong, my cabbage will going to come
out weak. When I make cabbage, turnip greens, caloobs, any of those rich flavored vegetables
this is the procedure I go.
So what I always like to do, got to be careful this is very hot, I want to taste this. If my broth is
rich, then I'm good to go. Now I might add a little salt and pepper, bacon fat. That’s good. I can
taste the salt, just a little strong on salt. But about the time the cabbage gets in there, it’s going to
dull that down a little bit. I can taste the heat of the red pepper.
The reason I cut on my dark cabbage first, we're going to do that now, let that cook 2-3 minutes
to soften it. Because it’s going to be tougher and a little bit bitter. That way we can go ahead and
get that soft. We're going to cook this the whole time with the lid off. We don’t want the lid on,
this is a strong vegetable and we want to go ahead and let some of that bitterness of the kind of
evaporate out. So let's bring that to a boil about 2 minutes.
Let's start in our cabbage. Now you're going to say, chef, there is more cabbage than there is pot.
Don’t worry about it. It’s going to cook down. I'm going to push it down into that hot liquid,
keep adding it. It’s all in the pot. You're probably thinking, alright chef, you're cooking for an
army. That's a lot of cabbage. Actually, this is only about 6 servings of cabbage, it's a medium
size head. This is going to cook down, it’s all going to be below the liquid in a couple of
minutes, believe it or not.
If you do have some leftover cabbage, you can go ahead and put it in a refrigerator and
microwave the next day. Individual servings 'til it’s warm. Don’t microwave too long, it will be
too mushy.
So its cook down, everything underneath the water. What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn
this into medium heat. Let this cook about 5-10 minutes. We don’t want to overcook it, we don’t
want them to be all white when it gets done. So I want that bright green. Give it about 5-10
minutes, stir about every 3-4 minutes.
Our cabbage is done, still got a nice green to it. Little bit of pass al dente stage. Again, don’t
cook 'til it’s white. You don’t want to do that, you lose too much nutritional value.
Let me show you right here this water we got here. This liquid I should say, some call that pot
liquor. You can actually, after you take your cabbage out, let it cool. And while it’s still warm,
drink it raw, lot of vitamins. Real good with the food flavor. Same flavors that’s in the cabbage is
in that broth.
One thing to remember when you're plating up this cabbages, make sure when you spoon it out,
get a perforated spoon. Get most of that liquid, because when you pass it around the table, that
hot liquid that’s in that bowl. If it spills on someone, it will be not a good thing. Let's go ahead
and plate this up.
We got a hot pan of steamed cabbage right here ready to go to the table. This is chef David
Bishop cooking and teaching, until next time. May God bless.