Braised Red Cabbage Recipe

Following on from yesterday’s post on eating more vegs and making a beetroot, parsnip and stilton soup, I wanted to write up this braised red cabbage recipe. 

It is a simple dish but it needs quite a long time to cook down and it is a good one to put on early on a Sunday morning. It will work very well as a side dish for a roast. 

I had never cooked a red cabbage before and I’ve mainly eaten in slaws before so wanted to try and do something a little bit different. I asked people around me what they do with theirs and I also read a fair few recipes online. This braised red cabbage recipe is a result of that research and I’m pretty darn happy with it.

I by passed all the christmasy spices like nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon and went for something a bit fresher which I think worked very well. 

Ingredients

• 1 red cabbage
• 2 onions
• 1 cooking apple or 2 eating apples
• 1 table spoon of fennel seeds
• 1 table spoon of fennugreek seeds
• 75 ml of apple balsamic vinegar. I used one from Llewellyn Orchard as I had ran out of my Highbank Orchards one. 
• half a bulb of good garlic
• salt flakes to taste
• You could add about 5o grams of butter at the end if you wanted to. 

Method 

• Put the sliced onions in some oil and cook them gently until they are a light golden brown but not quite caramelised yet. 
• Add the fennel seeds and the fennugreek seeds and let that cook for another couple of minutes.
• In the mean time, prepare your cabbage. All you have to do is discard the manky outside leaves and then chop it up roughly and give it a rinse. 
• When that’s done add the cabbage to the pot along with the peeled and cubed apples and the vinegar. 
• Cook on low heat with the lid on for 2 hours. 
• Grate the garlic straight in to the pot and give it a stirr. Let that cook for another hour.
• Serve warm as a side dish with a sprinke of sea salt flakes on top.