9 hours ago
6
It’s not good news: despite a lot of messaging about healthy eating, Britons consume 12% less vegetables per week than they did in 1974, when the government’s Family Food survey began. And while the consumption of some specific vegetables – courgettes, say – has risen over the past 50 years, others have experienced a sharp decline. Among the biggest losers is cabbage. Cabbage consumption in the UK dropped by 80%, beaten only by brussels sprouts (87%) which are, after all, a kind of cabbage.
This is a tragedy, not just because cabbage is an unsung superfood containing essential vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, as well as protein and dietary fibre, but because it’s a flexible, abundant and potentially delicious culinary ingredient. It even comes in different colours.
Cabbage can sometimes seem uninspiring – especially at this time of year, when there’s a lot of it about – but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are 17 delicious uses for cabbage, guaranteed to get you eating more of it.
Guardian writer Meera Sodha is passionate – if not downright evangelical – about the versatility of cabbage. Her white cabbage, peanut butter and gochujang noodles is a good place to begin: a recipe so simple it’s targeted at students, takes about 30 minutes to make, requires no particular skill, and nothing – beyond perhaps gochujang, a Korean red chili paste – you won’t likely find in your cupboard.
It’s worth remembering that you don’t have to cook cabbage at all – finely shredded, it’s great raw in a straightforward coleslaw or in a spicier Jaipur slaw – Sodha again, this time from her cookbook Made in India – with carrot, red onion and mooli (daikon radish). When I can’t find mooli, I have substituted kohlrabi to no disadvantage, even though they’re not really the same thing at all. I’m guessing celeriac would also serve.
For Nigel Slater’s just-warm bean and cabbage salad the cabbage is blanched in boiling water for no more than a minute – that doesn’t really count as cooking.
Ironically, one of the problems with cabbage is how much you get for your money – it’s difficult to expend more than half a head on a single evening meal, and you invariably end with some left over. Okonomiyaki – Japanese cabbage pancakes – are an easy way to use up the other half of a white cabbage, with a simple sauce made from soy, honey and ketchup.
Rachel Roddy’s cabbage and sausage cake uses the outer leaves to create a sealed parcel of cabbage and sausage meat. Cabbage soup has a reputation as a hideous privation, but the reputation is undeserved – cabbage soup can be great. Yotam Ottolenghi’s cabbage and pot barley soup with whipped feta may be good for you, but it’s no kind of privation, while José Pizarro’s smoky cabbage and white bean soup, with cured chorizo and two kinds of paprika, sounds downright indulgent.
Felicity Cloake likes braised red cabbage at Christmas, and it makes a welcome addition to the day’s feast, if only because it has a long cooking time, which mostly requires nothing of you. Keralan cabbage thoran, on the other hand, cooks in under 10 minutes. Slater’s cabbage with mussels is a handy midweek dinner for two to have in your repertoire, especially as it makes use of dark green cabbage leaves.
One of the trendiest things you can do to a cabbage is burn it. We may have been over-served with recipes featuring charred quarter-wedges of hispi cabbage (the pointy kind), but the idea is still a welcome one – scorch your hispi wedges under a grill, on a barbecue or in a ridged pan, then dress as desired, perhaps with dried miso and ponzu, or with herb yoghurt and shallots, or as part of Thomasina Miers’ cabbage Caesar salad.
The other trendy thing you can do with cabbage is make kimchi out of it. Cloake’s masterclass version will put you on the right track, but if you haven’t got the patience for long-term fermentation, these quick pickled cabbage wedges from Alex Elliott-Howery will be ready to eat in as little as three days.
Finally, a pasta recipe: Jamie Oliver’s savoy cabbage and pancetta farfalle. It’s not only delicious but kills two birds with one stone: a surfeit of cabbage, and that box of bow-tie pasta you may not otherwise ever get round to using.
