How to Make Cabbage Stew with Meat and Prunes
This is a delicious and unique Ukrainian dish that is very popular in Western Ukraine. To prepare it you need cabbage, meat, prunes, mushrooms, and one very important ingredient - cloves.
Equipment
- 1 Skillet
- 1 Cutting board
- 1 Chef's knife
Ingredients
- 1 cabbage
- 1 pound turkey (or chicken) breast
- 25 prunes
- 4 mushrooms shiitake, brown, or portobello
- 2 onions
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 carrots medium-sized
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 tbsp cooking oil
- ½ tbsp paprika
- 3 cloves
- black pepper to taste
- salt to taste
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- ½ cups mushroom broth optional
Instructions
- If you choose to use dry mushrooms, soak them overnight and boil them the next day. Strain the broth and keep it for the stew.
- Get all the ingredients ready for cooking: shred cabbage, grate carrots, and chop mushrooms, onions, garlic, meat, and prunes. Tip 1
- Preheat the frying pan, reduce the heat to medium, and add vegetable oil. Add chopped onion and garlic and sauté them until golden. Add mushrooms, then in about 1-2 minutes add grated carrots, mix well, and sauté for 5 minutes.
- Add chopped meat to the frying pan. Sprinkle with black pepper, salt, and paprika, mix well with other ingredients. Add bay leaves and simmer under the closed lid for 10 minutes, until the meat is almost ready.
- Add shredded cabbage, mix well, add water (or mushroom broth) if necessary.
- Add cloves and prunes to the mixture on the skillet, cover with the lid and stew for 20-25 minutes on low heat. Stir it one or two times and add salt to taste at the end if needed.
- Serve warm. You won’t need any additional sauce for this dish. Tip 2
Notes
Tip 1: Add salt to shredded cabbage and mix it well in a bowl by hand so the cabbage becomes softer and releases some juice. If you don’t have sauerkraut to mix it with, add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar – it will make the cabbage a little softer and the taste a bit sour (or you can even marinate the cabbage with apple cider vinegar overnight).
Tip 2: The dish will taste even better if you let it stay overnight in the refrigerator. It takes some time for all the ingredients to enrich each other.