Braised Cabbage and Carrots

While checking out a recipe on the FoodNetwork web site, I ran across a recipe by The Neely’s for Braised Cabbage and Carrots.  This recipe sounded good, and I wanted to see how this dish compared to the braised Red Cabbage that I made in December.

The afternoon I was going to make the Chicken Cutlets with Almond Butter Sauce, I decided I would make the cabbage dish to go with dinner.  I already knew that it takes over two hours to cook; I planned accordingly so that this cabbage dish would be ready with the rest of the dinner.

I grabbed our largest pot and tossed in six slices of bacon to brown on medium heat.  When they were about half cooked, I added the head of green cabbage, cut into two-inch chunks.  Into the pot, I added the seasoning consisting of cayenne pepper, celery seed, and garlic powder as well as the one-cup of water and set the heat to simmer.

The recipe says to stir the cabbage every fifteen minutes while simmering for two hours.  I noticed that after the first fifteen minutes that the cabbage we pretty well cooked.  I made sure the heat was at the lowest setting and continued to let it cook.

While the cabbage was cooking, I prepared the chicken cutlets and the almond butter sauce.

After the two hours were up, I noted that that the cabbage in the pot now looked like cabbage mush, but I went ahead and added the bag of baby carrots and let them cook.

I tasted the resulting dish before serving and thought that it might be a little spicy…  A little spicy is an understatement!  I ate about three bites and my wife maybe two bites.  We decided that anytime a recipe calls for one teaspoon of cayenne pepper, I will cut it at least by half.  We ended up discarding the remainder, as there was no way we could eat it.  It also was not very appetizing after the cabbage turned to mush.

If you would like to make this dish, I recommend cutting the cooking time by at least an hour and adding a little of the spices to your taste, not the recipe.

As a side note, I think it's funny that when I made this dish I was reading a cooking murder mystery by Peter King titled: Spiced To Death.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell