This braised cabbage with pork is a recipe you can make all year round. Cooked on the stove and finished in the oven. It is a delicious dish that everyone in the family will enjoy.
While growing up, cabbage with pork was a recipe we often ate. Cabbage is a very popular vegetable in Romania and is consumed all year round. We preserve the cabbage in brine in the winter and use it for stuffed cabbage rolls, but we make salads or cook it with meats in the summer.
We also make stuffed cabbage rolls using the blanched cabbage leaves. As you probably know, cabbage pairs well with pork, and the flavors are excellent if you use smoked meat.
Ingredients Needed
This dish is considered an economical one, as it doesn't require a lot of ingredients.
- Cabbage: Cabbage is a versatile vegetable that can be used in many recipes. You can eat it raw, but you can also boil, steam, pickle, ferment, roast, braise, or saute it. You can make many recipes, like these awesome triangles made with cabbage and puff pastry. If you like red cabbage, try this red cabbage with pork and red currant jelly.
- Pork: Pork and cabbage are excellent friends. For this recipe, you can use any cut good for a stew. I like to use pork shoulder or sirloin. Shoulder and sirloin tend to be tougher but flavorful and well-marbled with fat, making the cabbage delicious. Also, some leftover ham is always a good option.
- Thyme: Thyme is a classic herb that is used in many recipes with pork. I always have dried thyme in my pantry, and this is what I always use. If you have fresh from your garden, don't be shy to use it. Your cabbage and pork will be delicious.
- Tomato sauce: This is also a versatile ingredient. Use what you have in your pantry, sauce, crushed tomatoes, fresh tomatoes that you cut, or pure tomato paste.
- Onion: I use regular white onion. It is sweet and delicious and perfect for this dish.
- Other ingredients: Bay leaves are also great in stews and work really well with pork and beef. Salt, pepper, and some water are all you need to finish this dish in a glorious way.
How To Make Cabbage with Pork
Step 1. Preheat the oven to 350F. After starting the dish on the stovetop, we will finish it in the oven. Make sure you use an oven-safe pot/pan since you will use it on both surfaces. My grandmother used lard for this dish, so if you are brave enough and lard doesn't scare you, feel free to use it. It is delicious. If not, use oil.
Step 2. Brown meat and onions. Heat the oil or lard in a large pan on medium heat. Add the bite-size chopped meat and brown it on all sides. Chop the onion and add it to the meat. Sauté the onion until it becomes translucent.
Step 3. Cook the cabbage. Add the shredded cabbage and stir well. Cabbage contains a lot of water and takes up a lot of space at the beginning of the cooking process, so you need a big pan.
Step 4. Add tomato paste. After the cabbage loses some volume, add a little water and tomato sauce or paste. Also, add thyme and bay leaves. Then, add salt and pepper to taste. Allow it to simmer for 10 minutes until the ingredients get friendly with each other.
Step 5. Place the pan in the oven.
Place the pan in the oven and forget about it for about 45 minutes to an hour. The goal is to reduce the liquid in the pan and also caramelize the cabbage a little bit.
It will make your house smell so good, and if your family is anything like mine, you will see them emerge from their respective rooms, wandering around the oven, trying to see what you are cooking.
Step 6. Serve. Serve it with crusty bread, hot peppers if you like, and some sour cream. My family LOVES putting sour cream on top of the cooked cabbage and eating it with my famous pickled hot peppers.
It does feed a crowd. We always make more because we love to pack the leftovers for work the next day. It is perfect for a Sunday meal with the family!
Nothing better than cabbage with pork, and if you use some smoked meat, like ham, you will really fall in love with it!
Enjoy!
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📖 Recipe
Braised Cabbage With Pork
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3-4 tablespoons vegetable oil or lard
- 1 pound cubed pork meat
- 1 large onion chopped
- 1 medium cabbage shredded
- 2 bay leaves
- ½ teaspoon thyme
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 4-5 tablespoons tomato sauce
- 1 cup water
To serve- Optional:
- sour cream
- hot peppers fresh or pickled
- bread
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Heat the oil or the lard in an oven-safe pan, on the stovetop, medium heat.
- Add the cubed pork meat and brown it on all sides.
- Chop the onion and add it to the pan. Saute it until translucent, stirring frequently.
- Add the shredded cabbage and stir well. Add a pinch of salt.
- After the cabbage loses some of its volume, add a little water, tomato sauce, thyme, and bay leaves.
- Add salt and pepper to your taste.
- Allow it to simmer on medium heat on the stove for about 10 minutes until the ingredients get friendly with each other.
- Place the pan inside the oven and bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until the sauce is reduced to half, and the cabbage is caramelized on top. Do not cover it.
- Serve it with sour cream on top, your favorite bread, and hot peppers, if you like them.
Musial Rocks says
Why wouldn't you use some kind of broth/stock (chicken, pork, veggie) instead of just plain water?
The Bossy Kitchen says
You can, if you want. However, this is how the recipe was always done, with water. Believe it or not, cooking with broth/stock is not very popular in Eastern Europe, as it is here in the US. We never had broth/stock in the grocery stores and even today, this item is not available much. People use spices and herbs to flavor the food. Also, fresh cabbage releases a lot of water during the cooking process, therefore you do not need to add anything else to it.
John says
@The Bossy Kitchen, Whenever we make a dish with cabbage, we always use the water used to boil the cabbage because it picks up the flavor from the cabbage.
Vincent says
I loved this dish. Comfort food at its best.
Gabriela says
Thank you, Vincent! It is, indeed, a very good recipe!
Vincent says
This recipe shows how cooked food can be and often is better than the sum of its parts.
Gigi says
This was delicious and so easy to make! I wish I would’ve bought more cabbage so we could have more leftovers!
Sandra says
Awesome. This is a comfort food for us… always have it for a family gathering. A variation that we use is adding an additional 2 cans of tomato sauce and serve it over rice. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same. The nutritional information is for 1g? Oh, and we call it Ookie Lackie. Yeah, I know, right? Haha