Cabbage soup is a hearty, peasant style soup, but don’t let that stop you if you are looking for healthy soup recipes.
This one has it all.
It’s a delicious soup that really is a meal in a bowl.
The recipe makes a very large amount so feel free to cut it in half if you prefer.
The beef cooks up beautifully tender with the tomatoes and cabbage, but just leave it out if you prefer a vegetarian soup.
Cabbage, garlic, onions and tomatoes are all extremely good for you, so this is a very healthy meal. It is a good diabetic recipe. If you are really keeping your carb count low, I would leave out the potatoes or replace them with something like green beans or zucchini. It is really a whole meal in a bowl.
Cabbage Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 - 2 pounds beef soup meat, left whole or cut into small pieces
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1/2 green cabbage, chopped into fairly small pieces
- 4 onions, chopped
- 4 carrots, sliced or diced
- 4 - 5 potatoes, medium sized, peeled and cubed
- 8 cloves garlic
- 3 - 28 ounce cans tomatoes
- 1 bouquet garni, made by tying together 12 sprigs parsley, 2 bay leaves and 2 celery stalks cut into thirds
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- juice of 2 lemons
- 5 tablespoon sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Trim the fat off the meat and brown well, in batches, over medium high heat, using 2 to 3 tablespoons of the oil. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Remove the tough outer leaves of the 1/2 cabbage, then core and shred it. Add 1 more tablespoon of oil to the pan and brown the cabbage well over high heat, stirring constantly. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Peel and slice the onions. Add 1 more tablespoon of oil to the pan and brown the onions well. Return the meat and cabbage to the pot. Peel and dice the garlic and add to the pot. Add the tomatoes, other vegetables, bouquet garni, thyme, lemon juice and sugar.
- Cover and simmer for 2 hours. Add salt and pepper part way through the cooking time, then adjust the seasoning at the end if needed. Shred the meat if you have left it whole.
Variations:
- As stated above, simply leave out the beef to make this a delicious vegetarian soup recipe.
- Add other vegetables if you wish. Try peas (add them in the last 10 minutes only), chopped celery or green beans.
Cabbage soup really is quite a healthy soup recipe and it’s a good diabetes recipe.
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Cabbage in Soups etc
when a recipe calls for shredded cabbage a package of coleslaw salad can be substituted. No chopping and no waste. Found in supermarket fresh salad section.
This great comment comes from the previous version of the site:
Cabbage 3 in 1 Cole Slaw, Casserole and Soup
by Rhonda Lee
(Waterloo, ON, Canada)
I had purchased 1 head of green and 1 head of purple cabbage. Since this makes so much, I found 3 ways to repurpose the cabbage so we weren’t eating the same thing for days on end.
PART 1 – THE COLESLAW. I used half of each to make a coleslaw with shredded carrots and green onions which I packaged in the fridge and then later added to each serving as it was about to be eaten – the whipped dressing and a mixture of salt/pepper with celery seed. This meant that there wasn’t any coleslaw pre-mixed left sitting out. It was all mixed and served fresh.
PART 2 – THE CASSEROLE. With the leftover mixture of cabbage and vegetables, I was also able to make a Lazy Man’s Cabbage Roll casserole just by adding pre-browned beef with diced white onions OR (in my case) TVP (texturized vegetable protein) rehydrated with beef bouillion. I put this into a casserole dish, added 1 cup of rice and then 2 cups of V8 tomato juice. Then I mixed in a few cups (maybe 3) of the grated cabbages, carrot and green onion mixture. This was mixed really well, covered and cooked at 325 – 350 C for about 1 hour.
The only thing I may change is pre-greasing the casserole. I figured since frying the onion and TVP or beef in oil that would be enough. It might make for easier clean up to pre-grease the casserole.
One other option is to pre-cook the rice in the tomato juice (1 cup per 2 cups juice) for 20 minutes and then add it into the casserole and just reheat or cook for 30 minutes in the oven.
PART 3 – THE SOUP. Then with the remaining premixed cabbages, carrot and green onion, I made a version of this Cabbage soup, leaving off the beef part and adding a combination of the V8 tomato juice and the can of whole or diced tomatoes.
For $1.50 per head of cabbage ($3.00) and some extra ingredients (estimate total cost for all three of these meals about $8 – 10) this really stretched the food budget in a delicious and healthy way with lots of variety from salad, soup to casserole !!!