I make the worst red cabbage in the world.

[BroccoliSpears]

I am not a bad cook. Some have even said I'm quite a good cook. I love cooking.

And I love red cabbage. LOVE it.

But I do not love red cabbage when I have cooked it.

I've tried various different recipes. I've done it in the oven, on the top, with carrot, with apple, with cider, with brown sugar and vinegar. I've done recipes that take hours and hours of cooking. I've honestly tried.

Tell me how to make delicious red cabbage. Shredded and stewed and sweet and crunchy and caramelised and sharp and warm and mmmmmm.

TELL ME!

delia has lots of great recipes for it, look at deliaonline.com

I do her braised red cabbage with apples (only with about half the amount of sugar). It freezes and reheat really well so is worth mkaing a huge batch.

Long slow cooking with some sweet, some acidic, some salty flavours and some fat.

Oh and it always tastes better the next day.

I just pop mine the slow cooker with a cup of cider vinegar and a tablespoon of muscavado sugar, top up with stock (I use that marigold bouillion stuff) and leave overnight.

I don't like Delia's.
I found one online where you fry it with some onion and apple. Add red wine, brown sugar and balsamic then cover and microwave for 5 mins which is much n icer.

...and quicker.

Delia's didn't work for me. I was gutted.

Interesting thought to use the micro. I never think of using it but I've heard that some things are actually better in the microwave.

Message withdrawn

try delia's again!

don't bother to layer stuff up

just bung it all in (with less sugar than she says)

after about an hour in the oven give it a good stir

M&S does very good ready made.

here's the one I was talking about - worth a try!

Buy Lidl's rotkohl.

It's gorgeous.

broccoli am with you there. mine's always a bit sweaty and/or over sweet. also has the habit of losing its colour and looking a bit washed up and grey at times.

Buy frozen bio red cabbage with apple from Aldi. Its delicious!

What is it you don't like about it? That might help work out what you could change. I often find made homemade red cabbage over spiced, so have adapted to milder version. I don't have a set recipe for amounts, but add a cooking apple, a splash of redwine vinegar, sugar, a couple of table spoons of redcurrant jelly, and, I think the secret of my enjoying it more, a mulled wine sachet instead of other spices. Do mine in the oven.

This is what I cooked tonight:

Whole red cabbage, sliced reasonably thinly.

Boil for 5 mins in salted water. Drain. In the pan, melt some butter and then fry a thinly sliced onion till it starts to caramelise. Season with black pepper. Tip the cabbage back in again and stir so it is coated with the buttery juices. Add a good splash of red wine vinegar and a small teaspoon of sugar (or Splenda, which is what I used). Turn the heat down, cover the pan and cook gently for about 10 minutes.

Just before serving I stirred in a tablespoon of double cream.

i do this, Red C shredded in pan with lump of butter half bottle of white wine some all spice and brown sugar, cook for hours then toss in some raisins at the end cook for a furth 20 mins to plump em up.

Sorry - I actually cooked mine for 20 minutes, not 10. I think that is one of the secrets, longer and slower cooking.

I really like Nigella's recipe in Feast. It's approximately as follows:

Thinly slice on onion in half moons
Soften in a pan with a little olive oil
Thinly slice red cabbage
Add cabbage to softened onions and stir until all the veg is slightly sweated off
Add 3 tablespoonfuls of soft brown sugar and continue to stir
Add 1/4 tsp of mixed spice - or if you don't have ready made mixed spice just use little pinches of cinnamon, nutmeg and mace and stuff.
Add juice of one orange (though I use orange juice because I'm lazy)
Add 1/2 a bottle of red wine.
Simmer for half an hour and then add one eating apple, cored, peeled and cut into small cubes.

Continue to simmer for as long as you can be bothered - at least another hour, and longer if you have time. It also reheats excellently.

This recipe is fantastic:

www.waitrose.com/recipe/Braised_Red_Cabbage_with_Apple.aspx

I am often not the best cook (to easily dstracted) but it worked so well, and it does taste even better the next day.

Thank you for the recipes. I got a red cabbage in this week's veg box so will give a couple of these recipes a try. I'll let you know...

I found out yesterday that if you just boil red cabbage and let it go slightly cold it turns purple .. and totally cold it turns blue

that is so weird

(delia's christmas braised red cabbage with apple is lovely)

nerd fact of the week: red cabbage is a natural indicator of ph.

If you boil it with nothing added and pour off the water it will be red in contact with acids, bluey purple in a neutral solution and yellow in contact with alkalies. Which is why, if you are stewing it, it's worth adding something acidic like red wine or apple as it causes it to stay a nice jolly red.

So. A lovely experiment for the kids next time you are eating.

Ooh. Good nerd fact. I like that.