Easy and Delicious Boiled Cabbage Recipe - The How-To Home (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put vinegar in cabbage when boiling it? ›

Red cabbages can be stored in a cool, dark place for a week to ten days. Before cooking, remove any tired or discoloured leaves and always cook red cabbage with a little vinegar. This preserves the beautiful purple colour – without it, the cabbage will turn blue!

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, then add cabbage. (It's OK to crowd the pot because the cabbage will shrink!) Step 2Boil until tender, about 5 minutes for shredded cabbage and 10 minutes for wedges.

You don't add baking soda. Adding baking soda to your boiling cabbage can help reduce the objectionable smell and maintain the green color long after when it typically turns grayish from cooking for too long. However, this may rid the cabbage of its nutritional value.

Boiled cabbage is notoriously smelly and steaming is often thought of as a less aromatic way to cook the vegetable. However, the pungent smell is actually the result of overcooking. Boil it just until tender, and you won't have a stinky kitchen.

Crisp it up: Shredded cabbage stays perky if it's soaked in cold water.

It's Packed With Nutrients

Half a cup of cooked cabbage has about a third the vitamin C you need for the day. It also gives you doses of fiber, folate, potassium, magnesium, vitamins A and K, and more.

Get a pot of water up to nearly boiling. The pot should be large enough to hold the head of cabbage and enough water to nearly cover it.

Cook until the liquid evaporates and the cabbage is nice and tender — check after about 5 minutes. If your cabbage isn't quite tender enough, add a splash more liquid and cook for a few additional minutes.

In fact, the most common cause of unappetizing boiled cabbage is overcooking. Overcook the hearty leaves, and you'll end up with limp, stinky mush that no one wants to eat.

Do you boil cabbage in hot or cold water? ›

Boil cabbage by cleaning and preparing it, then cooking it in hot water for just a few minutes.

To reduce the likelihood of experiencing gas after eating cabbage, consider cooking it thoroughly. This can help break down the fibers and make it easier to digest. Additionally, try adding caraway seeds or fennel seeds to your cabbage dishes, as these spices are known to help reduce gas.

To ferment vegetables, such as cabbage, we take advantage of these two qualities – it's our golden ticket to fermentation! First, we add enough salt to make it difficult for competing microorganisms to survive. The salt then draws moisture out of the cabbage's cells through osmosis, forming a salty brine.

Substances such as lemon juice and vinegar turn the cabbage juice red because they are acidic. Ammonia turns the cabbage juice into a blue/green color because it is a base, a material that tastes bitter and makes an acid neutral. Water does nothing, as it is a neutral.

If you add vinegar it will stay the original color. The reddish pigment in the cabbage acts as a pH indicator like litmus paper. Your method of cooking is alkaline which isn't bad but would change the color of cabbage.

Some cleaning enthusiasts recommend boiling a pan of vinegar to help get rid of strong odours by turning the acetic acid into a vapour that might more readily react with any volatile bases in a room.

The vinegar will turn the cabbage juice red because it is an acid (acetic acid). The baking soda will turn the cabbage juice greenish-yellow because it is a base (sodium bicarbonate).