Golumpki are Polish stuffed cabbage rolls. They're wonderful, and they take an afternoon: blanching leaves, rolling the filling, tucking everything into a pan. This soup gets the same flavors into one pot. You get beef, rice, and soft cabbage in a tomato broth, and it's ready in about an hour.
This one starts with a Polish cabbage roll soup from Allrecipes. We left the soup alone. The only change comes at the bowl: a spoonful of sour cream stirred with fresh dill and a pinch of smoked paprika. It melts into the hot broth and makes the whole thing taste like the cabbage rolls you remember.
Serves 8. Takes about 1 hour.
Soup adapted from Polish Cabbage Roll Soup on Allrecipes.
Ingredients
For the soup
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½ cup unsalted butter
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1 yellow onion, diced
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2½ teaspoons kosher salt
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1 pound ground beef
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3 cloves garlic, crushed
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1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
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1 pinch cayenne pepper
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1 bay leaf
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2½ cups beef broth, plus more as needed
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3 cups canned crushed or puréed tomatoes
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1½ cups water, plus more as needed
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2½ pounds green cabbage, cut into 1½-inch pieces
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1 cup long grain white rice
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¾ cup chopped Italian parsley, divided
For the dill sour cream
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½ cup sour cream
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2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
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A pinch of smoked paprika
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A pinch of salt
To serve
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Rye bread, toasted and buttered (optional)
Method
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Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring, until the onion is soft and translucent, 4 to 5 minutes.
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Add the ground beef. Cook, breaking up the clumps, until it's browned and in small crumbles, about 5 minutes.
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Stir in the garlic, black pepper, cayenne, and bay leaf and cook for 1 minute. Pour in the beef broth, turn the heat to high, and bring it to a boil.
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Stir in the cabbage. Lower the heat to medium and cook until the cabbage is just tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
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Add the tomatoes and water and simmer 10 to 15 minutes more.
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Stir in the rice and half the parsley. Simmer until the rice is tender and the soup thickens, about 20 minutes. If it gets too thick, add a little more broth or water. Season with salt to taste and fish out the bay leaf.
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While the soup simmers, stir together the sour cream, dill, smoked paprika, and salt.
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Ladle the soup into bowls. Top each with a spoonful of dill sour cream and some of the remaining parsley. Serve with rye toast if you like.
A few things worth knowing
The rice keeps drinking. Rice soaks up broth as the soup sits, so leftovers turn thick, almost like the filling of a cabbage roll. Loosen them with a splash of broth or water when you reheat.
Cut the cabbage big. The 1½-inch pieces hold up during the long simmer. Shred it fine and it disappears into the broth.
Go easy on the salt at first. Beef broth varies a lot. Taste at the end before you add more.
The sour cream is the point. Plain works fine, but the dill and smoked paprika are what make it taste like golumpki and not just beef and tomato soup.
It freezes well without the rice. If you want to freeze a batch, you can cook the rice separately and stir it into each portion when you reheat. Keep the dill sour cream in the fridge and make it fresh.
Good with
Buttered rye toast, a crisp apple, and a cold beer. On a busy night it's a whole dinner in one bowl. If you made the roasted cabbage wedges, this is the other half of your cabbage week.
