Cabbage Roll Casserole (Cabbage rolls for the lazy)

I've mentioned a few times that my family is of Ukrainian heritage and that I do enjoy many delicious Ukrainian dishes, courtesy of my Great-Grandma Stella! Pierogies, borscht, cabbage rolls, sautéed sauerkraut... Delicious.

All of these are my favourites, but cabbage rolls are always a special treat because they are tedious to make! Making cabbage rolls involves many steps - blanching individual cabbage leaves without tearing them, making the ground beef and rice filling, filling the cabbage leaves with the filling and rolling them up securely without ripping the leaves, and baking it off in a bath of tomato sauce... A lot of steps.

So, as a kid, my mom used to make a cabbage role casserole that still involved all the delicious ingredients, but was made more like a lasagna with layers of the beef/rice filling alternating with cabbage and tomato sauce. I couldn't get my hands on my mom's recipe, so I googled and this recipe came up, so I gave it a shot.

Ingredients

1.5 lbs ground beef (I used extra lean)

2 medium onions, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 14oz can of plain tomato sauce

1 14oz can of water (used the tomato sauce one once you've emptied it into your pot!)

1/2 cup uncooked rice (NOT INSTANT!)

4 cups of cabbage, chopped or shredded

Sour cream (it's not Ukrainian if it doesn't have sour cream... lol)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Brown ground beef with onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Add tomato sauce and water.
4. Bring to a boil.
5. Add rice and stir.
6. Reduce to a simmer and cover for 20 minutes.
7. Grease a baking dish (I used a 9 x 9 casserole dish, but you could use a 9 x 13)
8. Put 1/2 of the chopped cabbage in a layer on the bottom of dish.
9. On top, layer on 1/2 of the beef/rice mixture.
10. Add another layer using the remaining cabbage.
11. Finish with the rest of the beef/rice mixture.
12. Cover and bake for 1 hour.
13. Serve with a dollop or two of sour cream.

Notes:

I had a few things I didn't like about this recipe... First of all, I was expecting it to taste like Grandma Stella's cabbage rolls and it didn't! Also, I would have reserved some tomato sauce to put on top. I like my cabbage rolls saucy!

Next time, I might even try not adding the tomato sauce to the beef/rice mixture, and adding it in as its own layer in the casserole... So it would be a layer of cabbage, rice/beef, tomato sauce, cabbage, rice/beef, tomato sauce. I just really didn't like having the tomato sauce mixed in with the rice.

So all in all, not a bad meal... But it still doesn't compare to the real thing!