It’s Soup Season, No Doubt

Jeff Green | Feb 01, 2023

There are times when people would make a soup, a salad, a main course and side courses, perhaps even dessert, all for the same meal.

But unless it is some sort of event, a birthday or major holiday, or a dinner party, soup is more often than not a meal. Especially if it is a hearty soup with beans, vegetables, and meat for those who eat meat. When the weather is cold, and the kettle on our old cook stove is humming away, it is hard to think about anything to cook other than a 3 day soup.

It is good on the first night, best on day 2, and still good on day 3. And the ingredients for the finest soup happen to be some of the cheapest and easiest to find.

One of the soups that I make is cabbage soup. It is a soup that my grandmother made when I was a kid, and she made it two different ways, with or without meat. Because we are Jewish, the meat version was served as a main course or when we were also having chicken, and the meatless version when we were having a “dairy meal” with a fish or cheese based main course.

My grandmother made the dish for my grandfather, whose family was from Romania, and when I did some research recently I saw that the version of Cabbage Soup that Romanians make is very similar to the one my grandmother made.

She never gave me her recipe, but I remember some of her methods and the taste of the soup, and have adapted it over the years. It might not be authentically a Jewish or Romanian version, but it satisfies all the criteria for a winter soup – delicious, hearty, keeps for a few days, freezes well, and is cheap to make. Oh, and it also only takes 15-20 minutes to put together.

I use any kind of stewing meat in my cabbage soup, but the traditional meat my grandmother used was what we called flanken (beef ribs) with some of the fat trimmed off.

I use stewing beef, a rump roast cut into cubes, or stewing lamb, whatever is available, about 1 pound.

Ingredients

1 pound beef, in cubes (see above)
1 small or 1/2 of a large cabbage.
1 can tomatoes
1 tbsp paprika
2 onions
8 cloves garlic
2 cans (28 oz) tomato juice or 1 can of tomato juice and 1 bottle of V8 or ED Smith Garden Cocktail
1 tablespoon tomato paste or 1/4 cup Pomodoro (optional)
olive oil
2 Hot Italian Sausages (optional)

Method

In a soup pot or Dutch oven. lightly brown the meat in oil over a medium-hot fire. Meanwhile, peel and chop the onions, peel the garlic, leaving cloves whole or chopping large ones in half. Remove the stem from cabbage. Cut it into about ½ inch thick slices, then cut the slices to about 4 inch pieces.

Add the onions to the meat and clear the onions. Add the cabbage and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is soft and sweaty. Add the paprika and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes.

Slice in the tomatoes and the juice from the can, add in the tomato paste, or Pomodoro, and cans of tomato juice/garden cocktail. Drop the whole sausages in. Add some more paprika, black pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil, and then simmer partly covered, for 1 hour. If you used sausages, remove them and cut them into slices and return the slices to the pot. You can serve the soup at this point but it will improve if you simmer over low heat for two to 4 hours.

If the soup gets too thick, add water. Serve with a slice of crusty bread, or better yet, garlic bread.If the soup gets too thick, add water