Unstuffed Cabbage Pot
Cabbage rolls without the rolling, rebuilt for one pot and a stove.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 7 oz
- cal / oz
- 74
- protein
- 30 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Dairy free
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Freeze-dried ground turkey | 4 oz | a shelf-stable stand-in for the fresh pound |
|---|---|---|
| Instant white rice | 1 1/2 cups | parboiled, not raw long grain |
| Dried shredded cabbage | 2 cups | dehydrated at home from half a head |
| Dried minced onion | 3 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Tomato powder | 1/3 cup | stands in for the jar of sauce |
| Sun-dried tomatoes | 1/4 cup | chopped, for the fire-roasted edge |
| Paprika | 1 tsp | |
| Salt and pepper | 1 tsp total | |
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp |
Method
- Bring 600 ml of water to a boil. Stir in the cabbage, onion, and sun-dried tomatoes and let them sit off the flame for five minutes to swell.
- Return to a simmer, add the turkey, and hold it there for five minutes so the meat pulls water back in.
- Dump in the rice, tomato powder, garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper. Stir once.
- Cover, kill the heat, and wait ten minutes. Do not lift the lid to check.
- Stir in the oil and eat. If it looks dry, add hot water a splash at a time.
The original is a slow cooker dish: raw meat, a whole head of cabbage, and hours of low heat. None of that travels. The rewrite keeps the parts that matter — cabbage, tomato, rice, paprika — and replaces the fresh ones with dried, so it cooks in twenty minutes instead of six.
Order is the whole trick. Dried cabbage takes the longest to rehydrate, instant rice the least, so the vegetables go in first and the rice goes in last with the heat already off. Reverse it and you get mush wrapped around cabbage that still crunches. Tomato powder plus sun-dried tomatoes does the work of a jar of sauce at a fraction of the weight.
Packing
Two bags: rice and tomato powder with the spices in one, cabbage, onion, turkey, and dried tomatoes in the other. The vegetables need a head start in the water, so keeping them separate saves you a decision in the dark.
Variations
- Swap the turkey for freeze-dried ground beef, or leave it out and add a pouch of lentils.
- A splash of vinegar at the end brings back the sourness a slow cooker gets from long heat.
https://mealswithmaria.site/slow-cooker-unstuffed-cabbage