Braised cabbage is an independent dish, an excellent side dish and a wonderful filling. It is for all occasions, quite budgetary, useful, but it does not always look attractive and pleases with taste. Why does braised cabbage fail?
Why cabbage looks unappetizing
No matter how tasty the food is, it must first look attractive. Very often a weird mess is made from cabbage. The dish is more like porridge, dense, consists of heterogeneous lumps.
What are the reasons:
- Use soft cabbage. For extinguishing, summer varieties are completely unsuitable. Such cabbage is best used for salads and light cabbage soup. It softens in literally three minutes, and then becomes sour.
- Long extinguishing. Also, the cause of sour and unappetizing cabbage can be too long a heat treatment.
- Frequent stirring. You do not need to touch the cabbage when stewing, especially soft varieties. Faster, it will not be prepared from this, but it will have time to crumple and fall apart.
- Fine cut. Often, housewives use graters and special knives for shredding, giving a neat and thin straw. It’s better not to. Also, do not grind cabbage with a combine. The pieces will be of different sizes, small crumbs will spoil the impression of the dish.
To keep the cabbage in shape, and the dish looked neat, try to cut it into not very thin and about the same size straws. You can make cubes, squares, but because of the structure of the head and the different thickness of the leaves, similar pieces are not always obtained. Also, cabbage without additives does not look very appetizing. With carrots, onions, tomatoes, the dish will sparkle with new colors.
By the way, very often cabbage looks ugly if cooked with potatoes. This vegetable can become sour, dissolve in a dish, spoil the look and overall impression.
Why stewed cabbage is tough
Sometimes stewed cabbage remains stiff for a long time. There may also be several reasons for this. The highlight is insufficient cooking time. It is necessary to cover the dishes, put on a small fire and bring the dish to absolute softness. It is usually checked by a test method or crushing.
What other reasons could there be:
- Hard cabbage. Winter varieties that are designed for long-term storage often have a lot of hard fibers. They require a long cooking time, but even after it are not always encouraging. If such a head of cabbage fell into your hands, it is recommended to immediately cut off the hard and dense veins near the stump.
- They didn’t squash the cabbage. If the cabbage itself is harsh, it is recommended to crush it well with your hands. This is done to reduce the volume. The method is simple: chop the vegetable, you can sprinkle with salt, but a little, then mix well with your hands until the juice is allocated.
- Not much fluid. Extinguishing requires water or juice. Not always enough in cabbage. As a result, the cooking time is delayed, a dry and harsh dish is obtained. Therefore, it is recommended to pour a little water, broth or other liquid that will produce steam.
- A lot of acid. Cabbage is cooked for a long time and remains stiff if acidic products are immediately added to it. Usually these are tomatoes, tomato paste. It is not recommended that they be introduced at the beginning of preparation, it is better to leave it in the end, it is desirable to fry the tomatoes separately.
It is generally believed that you need to season cabbage and other stews in the middle of cooking or near the end, when the ingredients are almost softened.
Braised cabbage color: white, red, brown
Braised white cabbage is always different in appearance, it all depends on the additives used and the cooking technology.
What is cabbage:
- White or just a light color. Such a dish was prepared without prior frying; tomato and other bright vegetables were not added to it. Typically, these options are used for diet and baby food.
- Red cabbage. This is not about variety, but about tomato. It gives a rich color and a pleasant taste. Add fresh, canned tomatoes, juice or pasta, mashed potatoes.
- Brown cabbage. If the dish turned out this color, then the cabbage was well fried. Or stewed cabbage is cooked with meat, which is also brought to a brown crust.
Do not forget that spices and other additives, such as soy sauce, affect the appearance. With it everything is brighter: both taste and color.
Extinguishing Dishes
The dishes also affect the taste and appearance of cabbage. The dish turns out with a "boiled" taste, if you use a conventional pan. It turns out much better in a pan.
The richest and most aromatic stewed cabbage comes out in a cauldron, a stewpan, and a cast-iron coop.
By the way, you can fry vegetables, add, cover and put in the oven. An incredibly aromatic dish will come out.
Good cabbage is obtained in a slow cooker, but after preliminary frying vegetables and meat. If you simply put all the products in a bowl, cover and put on the appropriate mode, then the dish will not please you with its taste and aroma.
Why is braised cabbage not tasty?
The taste of the dish depends on the ingredients themselves. It happens that the cabbage is bitter, has an unpleasant smell, traces of mold. In this case, do not use it for a dish. But if a head of cabbage just wilted, lost its juiciness, then this is not an obstacle, it can be put out by adding a little more water.
What else affects the taste:
- Pre-fry. If the cabbage is slightly fried in a pan, you can not even bring it to a rosy color, the taste will noticeably improve.
- Other ingredients Stewed cabbage is much tastier with the addition of meat, mushrooms, a variety of vegetables. But sometimes they also require additional frying, often this is done separately, and then combined with cabbage.
- Spices and aromatic additives. Where without them? In addition to salt, you can add all kinds of peppers, herbs, garlic, mixed seasonings, adjika, mustard to cabbage.
To prevent fresh cabbage, tomatoes are added to it. But not always tomatoes give enough acid. It is easy to fix with lemon juice. Apple cider vinegar is also sometimes introduced. If the dish is too sour, which is also not always good, you can pour a little granulated sugar into the stewed cabbage.
