Smothered cabbage

New Year’s is coming up. Y’all know what that means–cabbage and black eyed peas! I can never remember which signifies what: it’s either cabbage signifying money and black eyed peas signifying health or vice versa. Whatever the correct symbolism is, these two dishes are wholly expected at every Cajun household on New Year’s Day. I don’t care whatever else you’re cooking. I’m thinking either chicken & sausage gumbo or crawfish etouffee. And we’re gonna have cabbage and black eyed peas. No. Matter. What. I will post about black eyed peas in the coming days.

The way I cook my cabbage (usually) is smothered. My husband adores it, sometimes to my dismay. It helps to have a very large Magnelite (or Wagnerware) roaster. You need a lot of space for the cabbage when it’s first cut up, but then it reduces down to almost nothing. The list of ingredients is short, and it’s a fairly simple dish to cook:

1 large head of cabbage

1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped

1 stick butter (don’t get me started. I said butter, damnit.)

12 or 16 oz. package of bacon–just get the cheap stuff, and not thick-cut. It’s just to season the cabbage.

Tony Chachere’s (or other seasoning), to taste

Melt butter in large roaster with lid over medium heat. Cut bacon into 4 or 5 pieces across the strips so it yields squares or small rectangles of bacon. Put bacon in roaster piece by piece and render it on medium to medium-high heat until the fatty parts are pretty much cooked all the way through. Add chopped onions. Coarsely chop the head of cabbage. You’re going to use every piece (even the hard white pieces) except the stem. A good technique is cutting the stem out of the entire head first, discarding it, and then chopping up the rest of the head. When the onions are “clear”, add the cabbage in the roaster and cover. Stir every twenty to thirty minutes. When it’s reduced to about half the volume it was in the beginning, add Tony Chachere’s for seasoning to taste. Continue smothering the cabbage until you can easily cut through the thick hard white veins in the cabbage. If the thinner pieces of cabbage start to brown a little too much for your tastes, you can always add 1/2 to 1 cup of water at a time so that the harder white parts can continue to cook. This stuff will last for a few days in the fridge, so if it’s not all eaten on New Year’s Day, you can continue to delight your spouse with continuous noxious effusions from your butt for days to come by eating a little every day until it’s all gone. At the very least, cabbage is great roughage for your intestines!