I'm under the impression that you might think I meant a sausage wrapped in cabbage, so just to be clear, it's not anything like that. It's in the same family as stuffed grape leaves, with a mix of seasoned ground meat (normally beef in the US) and rice - both precooked - as the most basic go-to filling, inside a wrapper of parboiled cabbage leaf. Of all so-called pigs-in-a-blanket, the cabbage roll is the outlier; the only thing it has in common with the rest is 1) it is wrapped, 2) there is some meat involved (although I'm sure there are vegan versions nowadays), and 3) you eat it. They're a classic of Central and Eastern European cuisines.busterbill wrote:The only one I've never had offered to me was the one wrapped in cabbage.
Here's a pic:
It's typical to braise them in tomato juice, which reduces and becomes richer and tastier as you bake them. It's usually a plain dish, ingredients-wise, but surprisingly delicious despite that. Recipes abound, and they're all pretty much alike, although I remove the ribs from the cabbage leaves after they're parboiled; some don't take that step, but the leaves roll up more easily and hold their form way better if you do, and the end product is softer. The only drawback to removing the ribs, obviously, is that wrapping well can be compromised, but I have extra parboiled leaves on hand for patches when needed. Next time I might instead try shaving the rib down prior to parboiling to see how that works; it would keep the leaf whole, which would be a plus, but not a deal-breaker for me. While some might forgo the rice and/or tomato juice, I consider them essential: the tomato juice for its splendid, pervading savory-sweetness as it reduces, and the rice for lending a more palatable texture and lightness than ground meat alone would have.
"Pigs-in-a-blanket" (never mind the awkward grammar) is what I knew them as when I was a kid, so I presume there must be other people who still call them that as well. I don't call them that any more, though, mainly because the sausage iterations are more typically what people think of.