Crock-Pot Cabbage Rolls

I have a cupboard full of cookbooks that barely ever see the light of day. This is probably mainly due to the fact that they are in the cupboard above the fridge and I need to remove a vase, platter,and crockpot to get to them if I want to use them. Combine this with the ease of recipes on the internet (can you say food blogs and google?) and I don't get around to using them much. I should set a goal to make a recipe out of them once a week. Or maybe once a month would be better.

Well, for dinner today I did what I do many times when it comes to thinking up meals. I typed into google what I was looking for. Fortunately, most of the time it works and I come up with a good recipe to try. Tonight's recipe was one of the more surprisingly delicious and I had to share.

A little background on the meal: first, I have decided to utilize my crockpot much more than I usually do. It's just so easy and food usually turns out so good because it's had time to simmer all day...yum. As I was looking at my meat options on Monday for meals, I saw pork, chicken, and ground turkey (these are our meat staples). We had pork and chicken more recently, so I thought I'd use the ground turkey. However, I wasn't in the mood this week to use it the way I usually do-- in a spaghetti sauce, tacos...something requiring watching on the stove as it browns. Plus, I wanted to utilize my crockpot more. So what did I do? I googled "ground turkey crockpot" and I found this delicious recipe on cooks.com: Crockpot Cabbage Rolls. I'm going to have to do it again. The sauce was great, the meat cooked prefectly, and the cabbage added a perfect flavor. I did adapt it slightly. Below the recipe, I've told you what I did to, in my opinion, make it better.

They might not look the most appealing, but don't let the presentation fool you...


CROCK-POT CABBAGE ROLLS

12 lg. cabbage leaves
1 beaten egg
1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. minced onion
1 tsp. salt
1 lb. ground turkey
1 c. cooked rice
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. pepper

Immerse cabbage leaves in large pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes or until limp; drain. Combine egg, milk, onion, salt, pepper, turkey and cooked rice. Place about 1/4 cup meat mixture in center of each leaf; fold in sides and roll ends over meat. Place in crock pot. Combine tomato sauce with brown sugar, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over cabbage rolls. Cover and cook on low 7-9 hours


My changes:

First, I didn't have enough large cabbage leaves, so I only used 8 (note: the picture of the rolls in the crockpot isn't mine, you're probably now realizing since there are more than 8. The others are mine, but that one is just one I found on the internet since I didn't take a picture of them in the pot and I wanted you to see how to put them in there. I digress). The ones near the middle were too small. Well, that, and I had a screaming baby and I was sick of carefully peeling the leaves off without them tearing. It ended up being more than enough for John and I. I just filled the leaves a little more than I would have if there were more, but it was perfect.

Second, I doubled the sauce. And I still felt that I could have had more. And in the sauce, I added a little more Worcestershire sauce. Mainly because I like the taste and it added a little more sweet flavor.

Third, and this wasn't so much a change as a shortcut, I used Minute brown rice. Primarily because it's what I had in the house, but also because it only took 5 minutes to make rather than the 20-25 for "normal" rice.

Last, it says to let them cook on low for 7-9 hours. Well, for the lack of time before dinner (I made them at noon and we ate at 5:30), I only had them in the crockpot for just over 5 hours. And I wouldn't have wanted much longer....the sauce was beginning to slightly burn in a couple places already and the meat was perfectly cooked.

It was a meal that tasted like comfort food, but with a much more healthy element to it. :) Yum.