The Best Way to Cook Cabbage and Beans

I never thought I'd say this but cabbage is trending so here we are with a beautiful pointed cabbage and we're going to cook a delicious meal with it. So you're probably thinking cabbage, you're going to make a slaw or a salad but no, we're going to be charring it in a pan until beautifully caramelized and then we're going to braise it in some Mexican style beans until it's soft and sweet. So grab yourself a cabbage which happens to be one of the cheapest vegetables in the world and let's get cooking. So the cabbage we're going to cut into nice big chunky wedges. I've got in half and then we're going to do each half into thirds. We're going to cook the beans in this large pan but first we're going to caramelize the cabbage. So just add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and then once that's hot you can lay in your cabbage. So you don't want to move the cabbage at all for at least a few minutes so it can get some really nice caramelization and colour on it. That's coming along nicely just a little bit longer. Okay I'm happy with that so I'm going to turn them all over now. Once the cabbage is nicely charred on both sides I'm going to add in a little bit of a spice mix. This is a really nice warming spice mix, it's got ginger, smoked paprika, chipotle and a little nutmeg. So just turn down the heat now I'll add a drizzle of olive oil to make sure the spices don't burn. A little salt as well can go on now, turn that over and then add your spice mix to the other side as well and then we'll just take out the cabbage onto a plate. It is smelling absolutely delicious in this kitchen now. I did also bake this malted seeded whole grain sourdough so that might be also contributing to the good smells. We've got lots of lovely flavour in this pan which we're going to make use of. I'm going to add a little drizzle of oil to it. We're going to start by adding in the onion which we're just going to finely chop and we're also going to add in some diced red pepper, about a one centimetre dice and then we're going to add a couple of tomatoes and I'm just going to dice them as well and you're very welcome to use some chopped tomatoes instead if you want to. The garlic I'm just roughly mincing, you don't have to do it too fine. In general we've garlic, the finer you chop it the stronger the flavour will be. I'm also adding a lovely fragrant bay leaf in. I just want to sweat this down so I'm going to add a pinch of salt to help draw out the moisture from all the ingredients. Okay this is cooking down nicely, it's got an almost jammy texture now. I'm going to add some ground cumin, ground coriander for that lovely citrusy note and some oregano. Also going in with a nice dollop of tomato puree, two dollops. Caramelise the tomato puree a little on the bottom of the pan as well, this helps get rid of any sort of bitter notes that you might get from the tomato puree. I'm now going to deglaze the pan with just a small splash of red wine vinegar, not too much. That's just going to bring up any of the mixture that sort of got stuck and caramelised to the bottom of the pan. So we'll go in with our vegetable stock now and our beans. I'm going for kidney beans and black beans. You can turn up the heat now and we're going to return the cabbage into the beans, nestle them into the sauce. You can pop a lid on as well. Okay that is bubbling away nicely, I'm going to pop the lid on and cook it for around 15 to 20 minutes. I will leave the lid slightly ajar so we can get some evaporation going and concentrate the lovely sauce. So I wanted to make a salsa to go on these braised cabbage and beans but I wanted it to be slightly different to the usual sort of tomatoes, maybe peppers, chili, that sort of thing. So we're going to make a charred onion salsa. So start off by sort of thickly slicing your onion. We're going to char this onion in a dry pan which I've just had preheating for a few minutes to get them all like nice and laid out flat for maximum colour. I'm also going to add one crushed garlic clove and then after about 30 seconds we'll give it a quick flip, starting to see some colour form which is good and then once I've got a nice bit of colour on the onions I'm going to add a pinch of salt which will help to draw out the moisture and just slow down the charring and also soften the onions slightly and then we'll add about a tablespoon of olive oil. I'm just going to finish them off for about 30 seconds just to soften them slightly more. Of course I forgot to press record so I just put the onions into a food processor with some apple cider vinegar for the acidity which works really well with the onions and then I'm adding a good handful of fresh coriander and then we'll just pulse this until it's finely chopped. You may need to scrape down the sides a couple times. We're going to drizzle in olive oil until we've got a nice sort of drizzling consistency and there you go, you've got a really nice fresh salsa made with just a few ingredients. You could add some green chilli as well, that could be nice. I don't always tolerate chilli so well so I haven't added any. Okay let's see how it's looking. The sauce has thickened up nicely and if we have a quick check of the cabbage, that is looking good, lovely and tender. Knife is sliding right through, perfect. Now for the finishing touch, we're going to drizzle over some of that lovely charred onion and coriander salsa. So, so good! Who could have thought the cabbage could be so delicious? It just goes beautifully soft, sweet and sort of buttery almost, really, really nice and those warming spices just take it to another level and then I really like that green onion salsa, just adds a really nice vibrancy and it's a bit different to your usual tomato or red pepper salsa. So there you go, a really lovely and hearty way to cook your cabbage and take it to the next level. Give this a go and let me know what you think. Thank you for watching, for some more plant-based cooking inspiration, check out this video!