Golabki - Oven or Stove top

Still cleaning up the last of the fall garden here in Ohio, and I have a couple of heads of cabbage to turn into Golabki. I was wondering how most of you PF folks make your Golabki??On the Stove top or in the oven? Do you use raw rice or cook it first?? Since Mama always cooked hers on the stove top, I do the same. But I have also used a slow cooker a couple of times and they turned out pretty good and did not have to worry about scorching them on the stove. So lets here from some of you good Polish cooks out there. What is your secret to the best Golabki??

very interesting. it works the same like cooking them on the stove top, but less messy. i'd do that.

since i do not cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs, i don't care how people do their golabki. i love them anyway :)

I swear by my pressure cooker - szybkowar.
Cook rice first, but I use a little less water than usual. Lot of sauteed onions, and both ground beef and pork for stuffing.

Almost everyone I know prepare them in the oven. That's mainly because they're made in bulk amounts, with the intention of giving them to family members & friends 👍

So true. My mom makes them oven/stove top, in that order. However NO rice in gołąbki!!! Never ever! Only cheap eateries do that!. Another big no-no are onions!. I'd rather put some rice near my gołąbki, but oh Lord, never onions :)

No rice in Golabki.......perish the thought! lol :)

Maybe my family's recipes came from the times when amount of meat available for stuffing would make too few golabki. ;)
Regardless, I tried them without rice since, and I found the mass of meat inside too dense. Rice lightens it up. And sauteed onions is a must for me.

Hi, I just made my first Golabki. It was time consuming but really enjoyable to make. When my mother would make it she would stick all kinds of toothpicks in it and just sort of cinch them up like a drawstring purse, but I decided to filet the hard stem, roll them like little fajitas like most people do, which worked much better. The oven decided to quit while I was wrapping the rolls so I had to put it in a big pot on the stove. Recipe I used called for cooked rice and beef, onions, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, worcestershire, tomato sauce (a little in the meat mixture,) egg, and Chef John from Foodwishes.com said to melt a stick of butter and put it in the mixture, so I did that. He said that was a crucial item, and so was garlic. So I had to take all my rolls out of the oven pans and put them in the big pot. I layered tomato sauce in between layers of rolls, and since they were on the stove I figured they'd need more liquid so I put a mix of beef stock and tomato sauce, enough to cover the top. There were so many rolls they came almost to the top. I hope this doesn't come out too watery. I'm thinking I'll have to cook this for about 3 or so hours. To everyone, what's your preference, in the oven or on the stove?

As you posted many hours ago I'm assuming that the gołąbki are well and truly cooked by now! I learned how to make them from my Polish husband (and he's first generation Polish, grew up in Poland). I've never heard of them being baked in the oven. I always make them on the stove top which is how his family make them. Don't know if it varies from region to region.

Here's my method. I cook the cabbage first, boil the whole thing in a huge pot. You only want to parboil it to soften the leaves as they need to be firm enough to handle without breaking. Then let it cool and separate the leaves.

I make the filling with mince (pork is more authentic than beef but I sometimes use a mixture of beef and pork, beef for the flavour and pork for the fatty element which adds additional flavour and moistness) cooked rice (again you should only parboil it, it should still have a bit of bite), grated onion and a little seasoning. I use black pepper and a tiny bit of cayenne and sometimes bind the mixture with an egg. Although I use lots of garlic in cooking, I never use it in gołąbki and the 'real' Polish recipes I've seen (not Polish American!) don't always have garlic so I'd say it's not an essential part of the dish and is up to personal taste. I would also never use Worcestershire sauce as it's absolutey not traditional in a Polish dish. It's an English sauce with a very distinctive flavour.

Regarding the sauce, it's generally fairly thin and I make my mine quite watery because my husband prefers a thin soup consistency for it. I make the sauce with two tins of whole plum tomatoes which I mash, then add quite a good dollop of tomato puree and about two litres of water. And yes the pot sould be absoutely stuffed with them, barely room to put on the lid. You can put a plate on top to weigh them down during the cooking process.

I layer the gołąbki in the pot and then pour over the sauce which I've already brought to the boil. Then I simmer it on the lowest heat for an hour or two.

Anyway that's how I do it, hope yours worked out ok. Smacznego!

That makes no sense. Gołąbki are essentially a northern version of dolma with cabbage instead of grape leaves. Intermediary versions between Poland and Turkey use fermented cabbage leaves (bulgaria, romania) or cook the gołąbki with sauerkraut (romania, hungary) (presumably to mimic the sour tartness of grape leaves).

Since the original were made with rice I don't see any reason to keep rice out of gołąbki (though barley or buckwheat might make more regional sense).

Always stove-top (slow-cooker is the same thing); never oven. Always a layer of cabbage leaves at the bottom of the pan (they get burnt so the gołąbki don't). Rice is optional; I've had traditional gołąbki both with it and without it. If you don't use rice, use another grain or even bulka tarta, almost anything will do. I use pearl barley. Fresh tomato sauce is pretty well non-negotiable - nothing else really suits.

Don't forget to blanch the cabbage leaves first to soften them.