Italian Braised Cabbage & Beans: Simple, Cheap, and Insanely Good!

Today I want to show you how I turn cabbage into a cheap, delicious, and easy Italian style dish. This is my braised Italian cabbage. It tastes incredible and we're building flavors with tomato paste, garlic, olive oil, and adding some cannellini beans to make it a full complete dish. We're finishing it with crispy bread crumbs, fresh herbs, and a little parmesan cheese for texture and balance. Simple ingredients, a really good technique, and a result that tastes way better than it should. For the full ingredient list, check the description box below. But enough talking, let's get cooking. One of the great parts about this recipe is how simple, accessible, and cheap these ingredients are. So we're going to make this whole thing with a couple other ingredients, but basically I had a cabbage, an onion, some parsley, a bunch of cloves of garlic, and a can of cannellini beans. And this is going to make such an amazing cabbage forward dish. So the first step to getting any recipe going is doing our prep. So we're going to start off with the star of the cabbage. So with the cabbage, what I like to do is just remove like the outer leaves. People always ask me like, do I wash cabbage? And kind of like the answer is like no, because once I remove these outer leaves, like what are we washing? Like the outer leaves were already covering these inner leaves. I'll take these and compost them. But right now this is like a tightly dense vegetable. All I'm going to do is wash the outer leaves. One thing I do like to do is I like to trim off the stem here. You can see how like dirty and ratty it is. So before we even trim the cabbage up, we're just going to get rid of that, that bottom stem. So now we have our nice cleaned up cabbage to start off with. So cabbage is easier to work with if you cut it in half. So we're going to take our cabbage and we're going to put it flat side down. Now from here, I'm going to take my knife. I'm going to push all the way through and cleaver down. And now from here, same thing on the other side. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take off like this dense hard core. I'm just going to take my knife and just try to cut around it. You can leave it in and just try to like work around it, but it's easier to take off now. So at least I've taken off some of this like dense, hard cabbage. It just takes a really long time to cook. So now I'm going to put my cabbage cut side down and I'm going to cut like thin strips. And what I'm trying to think about is like almost like, like, like thick pappardelle. Like pappardelle pasta is a little thick. It's about probably like as thick as my finger. And that's how I want to cut the cabbage for, for this particular recipe. Cut about halfway and we'll turn it around. And you could use half a head of cabbage for this, a whole head of cabbage. It all depends on the size of the cabbage. Cabbage heads can vary so much and how big they are, which is really going to affect the output of like how much cabbage you're going to get out of there. And if I get any pieces like these end pieces that are still a little thick, I'll just cut these down. But it really doesn't matter because once this cabbage is like nice and braised, it's all going to get really soft. And I like to just do this, like a little breakup of the cabbage just to see how much cabbage am I actually like working with. Because like once you break it up, you can really see like how much you have. Now we're going to cut down our onion. We're going to cut off the bottom and the top of the onion. I'm going to split the onion in half. I'm going take off any of the outside skin. I'm going to cut the onion into strips, but far thinner than I was cutting the cabbage. So you can see here, I'm going to put the onion sideways. I'm going to cut across the grain of the onion and we're going to cut these nice thin strips. I want this onion to cook and I want it to caramelize. So no, no big chunky pieces. We really want the cabbage to be the star of this dish and everything else is just a supporting, supporting character. The key is cutting onions is to cut them fast enough before the tears start. I just felt that kicking up right there. Next up, we got to peel some garlic. So I'm just going to remove the skin off these garlic cloves. We're going to mince most of it. And then we're going to leave like one or two that we're going to put in our breadcrumb topping. Then we want to leave those whole because we want to shred them and not mince them. So now that our garlic is peeled, we're going to take two of these cloves. We'll take these two. We're going to set these aside and the rest we're going to mince. So I'm going to trim off the root end of the garlic. Give these a crush. Remember to crush. It's knifed down. The handle is on the other side of the cutting board. I just open up my hand. I put my fingertips down and I use my palm to press the garlic clove flat. That helps crush the cell walls inside the garlic and start to release some of the flavor. Not only that, it just makes it easier to chop. And now I'll just keep running my knife over till we get a nice mince consistency. So the last thing we got to do is chop up some of this parsley. So I'm going to remove the leaves from the stems. I am not a fan of parsley stems and the easiest thing you could do is just take your three fingers and pull the parsley leaves off and pull the stem just completely separates. And always when I'm chopping up parsley, I'm always chopping up more than I need because I'll use it for this recipe. And then I usually like to have like some chopped parsley lying around for like a day or two. And I'll just use that to cook whatever it is that I'm cooking next. And I will do the same thing. We'll mince up this parsley. And here you can use flat leaf or curly parsley. Here I got the curly parsley. And why do I have the curly parsley? Because when I went to the market to go get parsley, this is all that they had. So you got to work with what they have. I feel like since like COVID, you could go to the supermarket at any time and they may not have what you're looking for. Whereas before that was just like way less likely. So I think like in our modern time, like you got to be like more adaptable. And if it's flat leaf parsley, cool. If it's curly parsley, cool. You can use whatever you want or you got to use whatever you can get access to. This is way more than we need. We only need probably like a tablespoon or two, but now for whatever it is that I'm cooking for the rest of the week, I already got chopped parsley on top and that's all done. The last thing that we got to prep is these canned cannellini beans. So you could start with fresh beans, but again, I make this stuff in a pinch. If you want to start with a dried beans, you got to do that like the night before you got to do a soak. Canned beans make cooking with beans a little bit more accessible. So all we got to do is drain this can and rinse the beans. And these are prepped and good to go. So our prep is done. So let's head over to the stove and start cooking. So I got this high rim saute pan. So you got to use something that's got a little bit of volume to it because the cabbage is going to cook down a lot. So we got to start with something high so we could really pack it in there. And this pot has got a tight fitting lid. So whatever you're using with, it's got to have some volume and it's got to have a lid. We're going to add some oil to the pan here. And this pan is continuing to heat up. It's not perfectly hot yet, but we can add our onions. So now from here, I'm going to move the onions around the pan just a little bit so they're well coated in the oil. And here we're going to cook them down until they're like soft and like a little caramelized over like a medium heat. So we're going to cook these for a couple of minutes until the onions have started to soften and they've taken on a little bit of color. So once these onions have softened and started to take up some color, we're going to add a couple of things. So first we're going to take our minced garlic. Here I'm going to add some crushed red pepper. So you can either eliminate this if you don't like heat or you can bump it up or bump it down. I usually like for something like this, my heat tolerance, about a quarter of a teaspoon. I did a half a teaspoon last time when it was a little hot for me and my wife. Now here is the Italian umami paste, so anchovy paste. So you can use regular anchovies or you can use the anchovy paste. The anchovy paste makes it just a little bit more accessible to use a little bit and not have just a bunch of anchovies lying around because it comes in this nice tube. If you don't like the idea of using anchovy paste, you could use a little as Worcester sauce. You would just put in a little bit later when we add our liquids. But here we're going to go with the real deal. We're going to use the anchovy paste and we're going to also throw in a little salt and some fresh ground black pepper. So now let's cook these lightly. The anchovy paste adds just wonderful umami flavor. A lot of Italian cooking uses anchovy paste and you would never know that there's anchovies in there, but it just has like such a wonderful flavor. And I'm just going to cook this for 20-30 seconds until I start to smell like the anchovy paste cook a little bit and that garlic become a little fragrant and that red pepper start to toast. It doesn't need a long time. Smells so good already. We're just getting started. So now from here, we're going to add our tomato paste. So this is going to be a little tomato paste heavy. So we're going to put about four tablespoons in there. One, two, three, four. We're going to give this a mix and we're going to incorporate the tomato paste into the cooked onions, the garlic and all those other flavor elements that we put in there and make like this like onion garlicky like tomato paste like mixture. This is the important part because this is going to start to fry and give us a lot of good flavors. If at any point you're noticing that your pan's a little dry, just add a little bit of oil. Hey, now we're getting nice good frying. But once I give this like a good mix, I'm just going to keep this over this like medium-ish heat for like a minute or two to just to get like another fry on this and just start to get this mixture to caramelize a little bit more, but not so far that we burn the garlic. So the procedure and like the step-by-step is really important because that's what adds amazing flavor to dishes. A lot of times people just want to throw everything inside a pan and like dump it. Like yeah, it'll come out okay, but it won't come out the same if you go step-by-step and really layer in those flavors. So now that the tomato paste has had a minute to cook because tomato paste is not raw. It is made from cooked tomatoes, but it has like a raw-ish flavor and that's got to get cooked out. So now from here, what I like to do is I like to add just a handful or two of cabbage. Not a lot, just a little. And it's just enough that I can take the cabbage and I can mix it into this mixture, you know, because at first the cabbage is really dense. It's a pretty thick vegetable. It's kind of hard at first. It's got a lot of crunch to it. And we got to soften up a little bit of that crunch. Not only that, but cabbage has the ability to caramelize just like the onions. So we're going to give just this little amount of cabbage an opportunity to do that before we start to pack the pan. And then we're unable to like move anything inside the pan. So once the cabbage has taken on a little bit of color and softened, we're going to add the rest of our cabbage. And I really want to emphasize like you want to start with what looks like too much cabbage because it's all going to cook down. And then once it cooks down, it's just not going to be a lot. So you want to start off with a lot so you don't end up with too little. So now I'm going to completely pack this pan with the cabbage. At this point, I'm not going to even mix it. I'm going to add about a cup of chicken broth to help soften it up. I'm just going to get in the bottom and just get some of that liquid to start to mix up on the bottom. And I'll save the rest of the mixing for once this cabbage softens up a little bit. So now I'm going to take my lid. I'm going to put this on and I'm going to let this sit for about 10 minutes to help steam up some of this cabbage and let it soften. So after about 10 minutes, the cabbage has steamed a little bit. Now it's just like a little easier to mix. So now we're just going to mix everything all together, break up any of the big chunks of cabbage that have softened up and now can get broken apart just a little easier. And those will start to cook down as well. And all I do is just take my spatula and just jam them in there, just break them up. And now we're just going to slowly and neatly start working everything from the bottom to the top and mixing it around. And we're going to coat everything in that beautiful, yummy tomato paste and flavor mixture that's on the bottom. At this point, I'm going to add some white wine vinegar. So we're going to add a couple of tablespoons of that. The vinegar is going to give this just a nice flavor pop. Braised dishes usually have like a vinegar component because that acid really enhances the flavor of the long cook of like everything in there. And we already have a lot of flavor elements. So like the salt plus the acid really makes just all the flavors go. So once I've given this a good mix, I'm always looking to see like is there liquid on the bottom because like that liquid is going to evaporate little by little. The cabbage might release some moisture, but I'm always trying to make sure that there's just a little bit of liquid on the bottom so that this all can like steam and braise because without that liquid stuff's just going to like fry and burn. So now I'm going to cook this for another 30 to 45 minutes until the cabbage is like nice and soft and melted. And I'll check on it about every 15 minutes while it's simmering over like a low to medium lowish heat. So after another 15 minutes, the cabbage is softened up really nicely. You can see how everything just looks like way more tender. We're going to give this just a mix just to work whatever's on the bottom to the top. This is probably going to need another 30 more minutes. So we're going to do this like two more times where like we cover it, we give it like 15 minutes, we mix it up, and then we give it like another like 15 minutes, and then the cabbage should be like nice and tender. But I notice there's like any like big chunks like still like all together. I'll just kind of like break those up. I think we've eliminated a lot of that. This smells so good. So let's cover this. We're going to give this another 15 minutes before we give it a mix. But we're going to transfer this over to a side burner. Now we're going to make some toasted bread crumbs. So I'm going to start off with this dry pan. I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil to the pan. And the bread crumbs we're going to use are going to be these pankoed seasoned bread crumbs. Just have like unbelievable flavor like built in. And we're going to put, I don't know, about a cup of bread crumbs. If I have a little extra, that's fine. Now with a nice clean spatula, I'll work the oil into the pan. I like to start off with a cold pan because I feel like a lot of times when you throw bread crumbs in a pan, they can get way too toasted way too quick. I'd rather the heat kind of like sneak up on the bread crumbs. So once the oils has been worked into the bread crumbs, I'm just going to like bread the bread crumbs around the pan and just let them toast. And like every minute or two, we'll give it a toss until we get the color that we're looking for. Remember bread crumbs can go from untoasted to toasted to burnt really fast. So do not leave bread crumbs toasting in a pan without you actively looking and watching them. And I just like to move them around the pan, spread them out, and then give them a little bit of a toss. So remember cooking is not only like looking and seeing stuff. It's also using all your senses like smelling. Like you can see that we've started to get like this nice toast on there. You can see it around the edges here. If I give it a flip, you can see that the stuff on the bottom starting to get nice and toasted. I can smell that. I don't need to see it. So as this is toasting, we're going to take those two garlic cloves that we saved before and we're going to give those a shred right inside. We're going to take our garlic paste. Once we shred it with that real fine shredder, it gets super shredded. And now we're going to work the garlic into the bread crumb mixture and just try to like break it up. So we're making these like toasted garlic bread crumbs. And the garlic will clump up at first, but if we just work it right into the bread crumbs and keep everything moving so nothing burns, we're going to get nice flavored, delicious, toasted, crispy bread crumbs. And if you see any of like those big like clumps of garlic, just break them up and then just start mixing them up. But this style of cooking is like very like rustic. So it's got little chunks and it's a little uneven. That's fine. That's what we're looking for. It smells so good. So I've taken it off the heat. You can see that the color of this has changed a lot. And once the heat goes off, the pan still has a little bit of heat. So I'll still give it like a little bit of toss until like the just that residual heat in the pan is gone. But now we can set these aside and these are good to go. Even though this already has some salt in it, we're going to just give it a little sprinkle of salt just to pop those flavors. All right. So now that was about 15 minutes. You can see that our cabbage is nice, super tender. All the hard pieces are now just very, very tender. It almost looks very uniform too. And now too, if we check the bottom of the pan, there's no excess liquid pooling up anymore. So we didn't have to add any liquid, but if any time like during this process, it was a little dry, we would have added some liquid. But I think that we've actually taken this far enough. It just needs a couple more minutes to cook. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give this a mix and now we're going to fold in our beans. The beans are already fully cooked, so we don't need to cook them a lot. They just need to warm, absorb some flavor, but we don't want to overcook them. Then they become very mushy. So now gently, I'm going to fold in the beans and I'm trying not to mush them. I'm just working them around. Make sure I don't dump everything all over the stove. And I'm just going to gently fold those beans in there, mix up the cabbage, and we're going to just keep this covered and cook it for just about five more minutes. So let's give this a cover and let it cook for just five more minutes and then we'll plate it. So this has been sitting with the beans for about five minutes. I turned off the heat and now look how amazing this looks. You can see how much that the volume came down. I mean, we're down like 50%. This was filled to the top before and now look how everything shrunk down as the cabbage got a little bit more tender. So now let's take some of these breadcrumbs, these crispy garlic breadcrumbs, and toss it on top. It's going to give this great texture because a lot of stuff in here is a little mushy, so it needs just a little bit of crunch. Not only that, but there's just amazing flavors in here. And if you have any extra breadcrumbs, that's okay because we can just throw those on as we serve this. Now some of that fresh parsley for that pop of color and also a nice fresh element. Now look how this dish comes alive as we're just sprinkling on the green stuff. Looks so good. And last but not least, the final touch, some fresh grated parmesan cheese right on the top. This dish looks amazing, smells amazing, all these ingredients are super accessible. I can't wait to try this. I wish I could get the smell over to you wherever you're watching this because this smells so good. It looks fantastic, it smells even better. I can't wait to try this. So let's take a nice big scoop of this, nice tender cabbage. I absolutely love this dish, so I'm going to make sure that I eat a nice amount of it. Look how amazing that looks. And right before you try it, if you have some extra breadcrumbs, you can just dress up each plate or each side individually. A little bit of that, a little parsley, a little extra cheese. Oh my God, this looks and smells fantastic. I can't believe this is just cabbage and beans and onions. Let's try to get a little bit of everything on one bite. This is going to be hot. I hope I don't burn my mouth, but this is going to be an epic, epic bite. I'm going to go out and say this, this is one of the best cabbage dishes I have ever made. It is so good. You could eat this as an entree by itself. It's that good. And that's how amazing cabbage is. This is so good and the flavors are amazing. It's got umami, it's got that earthy tones from the vegetables. I love everything with beans. So you add beans to something I'm in, the breadcrumbs give it that perfect texture, the cheese. This is so good. I have not been eating cabbage for that long. I really got into it like in the last like couple of years, but the more recipes I make and the more I find out like what you can do with cabbage, all the different ways that you can go with it. You know, here we went like a little Italian with it. It is so, so, so good. This is eating like a delicious bowl of pasta and I can't stop. I'm not saying it's a substitute for pasta because it's not the same thing as pasta, but it eats like pasta. You start mixing and stuff like this, you might not be missing the pasta. So this is fantastic. Not only am I going to eat this bowl, I'm going to fill this up and eat this again because this is so good. If this is your first time here, subscribe to my channel, get the notification bell on so you can find out when I drop new recipe videos. If you like this video, drop me a comment. Let me know that you liked it or not like it because people leave a lot of comments like that too. And if you make the recipe, let me know how it comes out and how you liked it. And if you're into a braised cabbage, check out my red braised cabbage. It's like an Eastern European kind of braised red cabbage dish. It's really awesome and I will see you there. Thank you.