These weekly recipes have been well received so far, so for now I’m going to keep posting them. I originally posted this recipe in June 2011 on my health & fitness blog.

I love cabbage rolls. No one else in my family does, but I do. However, I have never been taught to make them, and the idea of boiling a cabbage and fussing with rolling them is just not something I have time for. And commercial cabbage rolls are either not that good, or not that good for me… or both.

So I figured I’d try making some lazy ones – all the same ingredients, but no rolling involved. The recipe below is the result. This was not adapted from anything, I simply took the ingredients my mother used to use to make traditional cabbage rolls, swapped tomato sauce for tomato soup (to reduce the salt and sugar), and threw it all in a slow cooker. The result? Yum!! I get a fix for my craving with ease, and it freezes nicely into single serve lunches for me to take to work. Perfect!

Ingredients:

1 lb extra lean ground beef (or turkey)
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 green cabbage (about 5-6 cups shredded)
1 cup uncooked rice (I used half brown, half white)
28 oz tomato sauce
1 tsp sea salt
2-3 cups water

Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan, and fry the onion until translucent.

Once the onion is soft, add the meat and cook until completely browned.

While the meat is cooking, shred the cabbage.

Once the meat is cooked, layer the ingredients in a greased slow cooker. Start with the cabbage.

Next add the beef and onion mixture.

Pour the rice over the beef, and sprinkle with the salt.

Finally, pour the sauce and water over the entire mixture.

Stir the sauce into the mixture to coat all ingredients, cover, and turn to high.

Cook on high for 3-4 hours, or on low for 7-10 hours. The end result isn’t super pretty – it reminds me of goulash.

This was super easy to prepare, and tastes just like cabbage rolls! It also reheated nicely in the microwave, making it ideal for work lunches – a good thing, as one batch makes 8 servings!

Nutritional data (per ~1 cup serving, makes 8):

Calories: 220
Protein: 16 grams
Carbs: 30 grams
Fats: 5 grams

A rough cost estimate breaks out like this:

Onion: $.50
Olive Oil: $.15
Ground Beef: $3.50
Tomato Sauce: $1.50
Cabbage: $1.00
Rice: $1.00
Total: $7.65
Per serving: $0.96

A fast, inexpensive, and healthy dish – I was very happy with the calories and fat content per serving. Plus it has lots of carbs and veggies – perfect!