Sausage and Cabbage
Updated Sept. 10, 2025
- Total Time
- 3 hours
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- Salt
- 3tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2pounds fresh sweet Italian pork sausages or bulk sausage
- 1large green or Savoy cabbage, about 4 pounds, cored and thickly shredded
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Crusty bread and mustard, for serving
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
499 calories; 43 grams fat; 15 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 17 grams monounsaturated fat; 7 grams polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 2 grams sugars; 24 grams protein; 1159 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and butter a 9-by-13-by-2-inch baking dish. If using sausages, remove casings and discard them.
- Step 2
Place cabbage in boiling water, cover, and let water come back to the boil. Uncover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain cabbage in a colander and run cold water over it to stop cooking.
- Step 3
Put about ⅓ of the cabbage in buttered dish and cover with ½ the meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with butter. Repeat, ending with a final layer of cabbage, and dot top with butter.
- Step 4
Cover dish tightly with a layer of parchment paper, then top with a lid or a layer of aluminum foil. Cook for about 2½ hours, until cabbage is soft and sweet, and top is lightly browned. After 2 hours, uncover the dish: if there is a lot of liquid in the bottom, leave uncovered for the rest of the cooking time. If not, re-cover and finish cooking.
Private Notes
Comments
One of the oldest recipes in the handwritten files I inherited and a favorite in our house. I'm wondering, though, why the cabbage is boiled first in this version. In my old recipe the sausage is layered with the raw cabbage and pressed down to fit in the cooking dish. Cooking time is the same. That way the cabbage cooks in the sausage grease. Judging from the photo, the result seems to be pretty much the same and the prep is a lot easier.
This is delicious. I hate to parboil things, but often just put the chopped-up cabbage, or rapini, or whatever needs to be parboiled in a colander and pour a couple of kettles of boiling water over the item. Does the trick.
We used bratwursts instead of Italian sausage and added some potatoes, parsnips and carrots, then flavored the dish with garlic and ground caraway. We had a couple of slices of almost stale pumpernickel bread and combined
them with panko for a crumb topping along with some grated Jarlsberg. We all liked it a lot.
Julia's recipe was a great springboard. Thanks for the
inspiration!
The cabbage was indeed silky, but the whole thing was so greasy; I even cut the fat back by using just 1 tsp of butter and 1 lb of sausage and tried to brighten with apple cider vinegar. A miss for me, though I see why others might like it.
I just cooked this for supper. I had a lovely Early Wakefield cabbage, picked at 3 pm, which did not need parboiling because of its freshness. Potatoes, sliced, went on the bottom; layers of onion and leeks interspersed with the cabbage and sausage (uncooked). It went in an oven of 325 degrees, which I immediately turned down to 300, and later turned up again to 325 when I had taken off the parchment and foil. I did add cream, which made it more than unctuous. A LOVELY DISH.
I’m curious if anyone has tried adding the mustard to the dish before cooking, perhaps a spicy brown or walnut?