Do you have a family recipe using cabbage? Care to share? #westsidemarket #westsidemarketcleveland #localproduce #cabbagerolls #cabbagesoup #galumpkis (at West Side Market)
I know a lot of people are really excited to move away from their parents during college, but I actually love living close to my family. While it’s nice to be one of those bizarre people who gets along really well with their parents, what’s ALSO really nice is that they also sometimes buy me groceries.
Last week my father bought me, like, three pounds of ground beef and some spring onions, bless him. It was a total treat because the grocery budget usually goes to things like flour and rice and potatoes (or, you know, blowing all my cash on Japanese stuff because I’m weeb trash) so we don’t usually have a lot of meat. So, thank you, Dad!
The problem is that I don’t normally cook with meat so I didn’t really know what to do with it? I was trying to think of ways to use up some leftovers (a few heads of napa cabbage and a can of crushed tomato I was angry at because I didn’t realize it came pre-seasoned). Ground meat + cabbage + tomato? Sounds like Galumpkis!
I’d never made Galumpkis before so it was a bit of an adventure and since this is college cooking the substitutes made it an epic adventure.
Galumpkis ala College BS-ery
Time: So long. Don’t expect to eat the same day as you make.
Serves: Depends on how much cabbage you have,
Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)
1/2 packet of bacon
5 breakfast sausage links
3 pieces of toast
1 egg
Salt and Pepper, like a hefty careless shake of each
Ingredients from The Outside World
aprx 2lbs ground beef
1 cup rice (they technically sell minute rice at school, but I despise it)
1 onion
1 spring/green onion (or 1 clove garlic if you have it)
as much cabbage as you can find (I had like 3 heads of napa but it works better if you use green cabbage)
most of 1 can crushed tomato
a big shake of white vinegar
like 1 tablespoon of sugar
Throw It Together
Wash the fuck out of your cabbage. Take that sucker apart (carefully, please, keep those leaves in tact) and wash all of that dirt off. You can pull out any leaves too mangled to use at this point. You can’t actually use the entire head because the leaves get too small, but save the rest of that cabbage for later (I like it in soup or cooked up with onion and apple).
Boil yourself a big ass pot of water. If you are using napa, take the water off the heat once it’s boiled and let the leaves soak for like a minute, of if you are using green cabbage boil them in the pot for like two or three minutes. The reason you have to do this stupid step is so your cabbage is soft enough to actually stay wrapped when you wrap it around the filling.
Take your cabbage out of the water and chop off the thickest part at the bottom. It’s too tough and doesn’t play nice with the rest of the cabbage and will not stay wrapped around your filling. It’s gotta go. Set your nice cabbage aside.
Cook up your bacon and sausage. If you can get real sausage that’s great, but this shitty breakfast sausage was fine to just toss in the microwave for two minutes. The bacon you can do in the microwave (3 minutes on each side aprx), or in the oven (380 degrees, 9 minutes on each side aprx), or on the stove top like a regular human. I’m scared of the spitting oil, so I make my roommates do this for me. KEEP YOUR BACON DRIPPINGS IF YOU CAN. Put that shit right in the mix. Delicious.
Cook your rice. I have a rice cooker (thank you grandma) but if you need to make it on the stove top it’s a ratio of 1 rice: 2 water, you boil that and then cover it up and turn the heat way down for twenty minutes. Please don’t microwave your rice. I know you can, but it breaks my heart.
Chop the shit out of your onion, spring onion, bacon, sausage and toast. Mix together in a bowl with the ground beef, rice, salt, pepper, and egg. Don’t be a dumb ass like me and burn your hands on the rice that just came out of the boiling hot pot.
Roll yourself a little meat ball out of this (your hands are gonna be nasty) and wrap it up in a cabbage leaf. Air on the side of too little meat because it’s so sad to see these leaves trying their best but being too small to make little Galumpkis. Place them pretty side up in a baking dish.
Preheat the oven to 350
Mix up your tomato, vinegar, and sugar. If you wanna get really fancy you can put in a tablespoon of Worcestershire (or a spoonful of ketchup+balsamic vinegar+sugar - ratio 2:1:1 - if you don’t have any) but I didn’t so it’s your call.
Pour tomato sauce over your galumpkis and bake uncover for an hour. Check them when the hour is up because they might not be done if you’ve got massive fuckin galumpkis.
I served them with frozen perogies from the school store. Over all, I was into these, but they are a pain in the butt to make and if you aren’t super into them they might not be worth the time. The roommates didn’t seem to care for them too much.
(feat. brought Oscar’s dinner to work )
Bonus: Meatloaf Leftovers
If you have left over meat you can make them into meatballs or meatloaf (which is what I did). All you do for the meatloaf is grease up a baking pan, put in the left over meat and cook it for 40 minutes at 350. Mix up like 1/4 cup ketchup with some vinegar, sugar and Worcestershire (ok, I used okonomi sauce because I’m a weeb, but it tasted good). Pull the loaf out after 40 minutes, cover with the sauce, and bake for another 20.
