Cabbage and ground beef skillet
A whole half head of cabbage cooks down with smoky beef and tomatoes into a cheap, hearty skillet that’s lighter than it tastes.
- 35 min total
- 30 min hands-on
- Anyone can make this
- Serves 4
- About $2.39 a serving
- 310 calories
- Good the next day
- Gluten-free
- Dairy-free
Dolly says: Make the full amount. It’s just as good for lunch the next day.
Ingredients
For 4 servings.
- ½ head green cabbage
- 1 yellow onion, sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 lb 85/15 ground beef
- 1 can diced tomatoes
From your pantry
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp black pepper
- ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
Each serving has about 310 calories, 24 g protein, 16 g carbs and 17 g fat, and costs about $2.39 at typical US grocery prices. Both are estimates from what the recipe uses.
Missing something?
- No green cabbage? Red cabbage or coleslaw mix works.
- No yellow onions? White onions or red onions work.
- No 85/15 ground beef? 90/10 ground beef works.
- No diced tomatoes? Crushed tomatoes work.
Steps
Tap an underlined word for a quick explanation.
Cut out the hard core from the cabbage and the leaves into 1-inch pieces. the onion and the garlic.
Chop. Chopping means cutting food into bite-size pieces that don’t need to be neat. Keep them roughly the same size so everything cooks evenly.
How you’ll know: Your pieces are about half an inch and roughly alike, even if none of them are pretty.
Slice. Slicing means cutting food into flat pieces of about the same thickness. Even slices cook evenly, so none are raw while others burn.
How you’ll know: Lay a few side by side: they’re close to the same thickness from one end to the other.
Mince. Mincing means chopping something into the tiniest pieces you can, smaller than a grain of rice. Tiny pieces melt into the dish, so you get the flavor without biting into a chunk of garlic.
How you’ll know: Every piece is tiny and about the same size, and the pile starts to look almost like a paste.
Dolly’s tip: Set the cabbage flat side down before you cut. A flat side can’t roll.Heat your largest over medium-high, add the beef, and press it flat. Leave it 3 minutes, until underneath.
Skillet. A skillet is a frying pan: wide and flat with low, sloped sides. The shape lets steam escape, so food browns instead of stewing.
How you’ll know: It’s the pan you’d fry an egg in, and a 10 or 12 inch one handles most recipes.
Brown. Browning means cooking until the outside turns brown, which is where a lot of savory flavor comes from. Give food room and time without stirring, or it steams and stays gray.
How you’ll know: The food looks brown rather than gray, and the kitchen smells toasty and savory.
Medium-high heatTimer: 3 min
Break the beef into , add the onion, and cook 5 minutes, stirring, until no pink is left and the onion .
Crumble. Crumbling means breaking food into small, rough bits with your fingers or a spoon, like feta or ground meat in the pan. Small bits spread through the dish, so there’s some in every bite.
How you’ll know: The pieces are small and uneven, about pea-size, with no big clumps left.
Softened. For vegetables it means cooked until they bend and lose their crunch; for butter, left out until it dents easily. Soft onions taste sweet, and soft butter mixes in smoothly.
How you’ll know: Onions squash easily against the pan with your spoon, and butter dents under a finger without looking greasy.
Medium-high heatTimer: 5 min
Food safety: Ground beef, pork and lamb are done at 160°F. When it’s cooked through there’s no pink left anywhere in the pan.
Stir in the garlic, paprika, salt, pepper and pepper flakes for 30 seconds.
Medium-high heat
Pile in the cabbage, cover for 3 minutes to let it , then stir everything together.
Wilt. Wilting means cooking leafy greens just until they go soft and collapse. Greens shrink a lot, so a big pile of spinach becomes a small handful, and that’s normal.
How you’ll know: The leaves turn soft and deep green and slump into the pan, usually within a minute or two.
Medium-high heatTimer: 3 min
Dolly’s tip: It will look like far too much. Cabbage shrinks to about a third as it wilts.Add the tomatoes with their juice, turn the heat to medium, and cook uncovered 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the cabbage is tender with a few browned edges.
Medium heatTimer: 9 min
Stir in the vinegar, taste for salt, and serve.
Dolly’s tip: A splash of vinegar at the end wakes up all the flavors.
Plan this in Dollop, and get the grocery list
Dollop puts this dinner on a night that suits your week, lists only what you still need to buy, and walks you through each step while you cook.
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