Sauerkraut is wonderful! Walton Feed has some good recipies. Don't forget the recipie link on the top right corner of the Walton page as well. I did a Google search on "Cabbage" and came up with lots of recipies and even a "Cabbage Soup Diet" which sounds remarkably difficult to adhere to.

I say go with the sauerkraut, develop a taste for it (if you haven't already) and invite lots of old German immigrants to your house for dinner, and have bratwurst BBQ parties for local softball teams (make them bring their own beer tho...).

Eric in Japan.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sauerkraut

Kelli, yes, sauerkraut is the most reliable way to save cabbage for a long time. I have to admit that I have always liked sauerkraut, but like so many things homemade, that which comes out of our basement crocks is eye-openningly better than any I've ever had from the supermarket.

We also find that cabbage keeps surprisingly long in the garden, so we can stagger harvest dates over several weeks and still use it as a fresh vegetable.

I don't have any remarkably different uses for cabbage: boiled in broth, boiled with onins and butter (sometimes called "smothered cabbage" here and one gets to use more butter than is normally considered moral!), added to soups (we are fond of a sausage & cabbage soup with carrots and just a small amount of potatoes thrown in), a major ingredient in "stir fries," and "cole slaw," a cold finely chopped salad which I imagine is called something else in Australia. In my city, cole slaw has a clear sweet & sour dressing with celery seed or caraway seed. Where I grew up, it was usally made with mayonniase or an otherwise eggy, heavy dressing.

Goodness, how could I forget--stuffed cabbage? You can roll individual leaves around ground meats with chopped vegetables or grain mixed in and seasoned how ever you like. This gets baked in the oven in a watery sauce which keep the leaves from drying and turning papery-tough. I'd use a dilute tomato sauce or perhaps a sauce comparable to what you's use for Swedish meatballs. You can just adapt a recipe for stuffed grape leaves if you like. Stufffed cabbage is one of those things that are good to make for large crowds, especially when you need something to prepare ahead of time and then keep hot until served. It doesn't use up much cabbage, but you can also tuck small wedges of cabbage in the baking pan and serve that alongside the stuffed leaves.

Coleslaw dressing:

1 cup mayo
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar
1/8 to 1/4 cup vinegar
Salt
Pepper

Adjust amounts to taste.

I put shredded cabbage in a strainer for a couple of hours to let the water drain before mixing in the dressing.

Thanks everyone for your great ideas.

Do chickens like cabbage?

i'm not sure if this is right but i think my grandfather used to bury cabbage in the ground and dig it up throuout the winter and spring when ever he needed it? does this sound right?

As for "excess" produce check out Bill Mollison's "Ferment and Human Nutrition"...

Chickens hate cabbage.

potty - i think your grandpa was making sauerkraut... it was common to store shredded cabbage in large crocks underground to let it ferment ...

I purchase fermented sauerkraut from my local coop. It needs to stay refrigerated as joepyeweed leads or implies keeping it cool.

Chow chow relish.

I love traditional cole slaw without the sugar, or, one of my favorites, shredded cabbage (also called slaw here), combined with similarly sliced peppers, carrots and even broccoli stems cut into thin sticks, if you choose, and seasoned with oil, vinegar and something peppery (like pepper flakes or add jalepeno papper) finishing with a light (or heavy) sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds. Because of the hot component that mellows out a bit, it's even better the next day, and the next, and the next ...

Also, I grew up eating a cooked (red) cabbage dish that my mother frequently made (she's a German immigrant): saute onion in heavy pot in just a little oil and add: 1 head cabbage, chopped; 3 potatoes, quartered; 1 apple; 1 or 2 bay leaves; 5+ juniper berries and enough water to cover. Simmer until cabbage is tender. Mmmmmm. My mouth is watering and my nose craving a whiff of that smell wafting through my house.

-A

Ok, this is my favorite thing to do with cabbage...it's sort of like cole slaw, but a bit different.

Shred it up and lay it on a round platter, cover the whole thing. Then, if you have some carrots, shred those up, and lay them on top, but only in the center...leave a few inches of the cabbage showing around the outside.

Then, pour on some Ranch dressing over the top. I can kind of go around like a spiral.

On top of that, sprinkle raisins and sunflower seeds.

If you don't care about presentation, you can just throw it all in a bowl and mix it up like slaw. I usually put quite a bit of black pepper and a slim dust of cayenne on the top of the platter too...not so much that it's spicey, but cayenne always "kicks things up" a bit if used sparingly.

I served this at a barbeque and people loved it. My girlfriend now eats it all the time, too.

By the way, use the best Ranch dressing you can get ahold of. I usually buy the Litehouse brand at Sam's Club...it's the best Ranch dressing I know of.

Give it a try!

Ok, here's another idea that I really like a lot. Shred a bunch of cabbage (a med size cabbage, I don't measure) and stir fry it in a heavy cast iron fry pan for about 30 seconds. You can do it in oil if you want, whatever amount you want (the original recipe said 1/4th cup peanut oil, as it was a Chinese recipe, but I think I just do it with hardly even a tablespoon of oil). The heat should be about medium high. After about 30 sec to 1 minute, add in 3 T water and 1 tsp salt. The cabbage will suddenly become almost creamy. That seems like a lot of salt, but I tried it with less and decided that I liked the 1 tsp. Ok, here's how I improved this recipe...use chicken broth if you have it, instead of the water and add just a touch of asian sesame oil (maybe 1/2 tsp) and some slivered almonds. I kept this cabbabe warm in the oven while I stir-fried something else and it became even creamier, but you might like it crunchy, too. This tasted really good to us and we have to avoid carbs, so I sometimes make this as the base for a stir fry dish and we eat the stir fry on top of the cooked cabbage!

Finally, there is an excellent website for recipes that I love and there are tons of interesting cabbage recipes that I read through the other day...one was a casserole that layered cabbage leaves with a bit of butter and then mashes ground sausage on the leaves, and then layers more cabbage, etc...and then bakes. People gave it very good reviews.

I also found a fantastic sounding recipe for a cabbage soup, sounds absolutely wonderful and has good reviews.

One last mention, there is a recipe on that site called Frizzled Cabbage...that recipe was one of the top 40 recipes on that site for weeks...and this is a very active website with 1000s of recipes...imagine that a recipe for cabbage would be so popular!! There are like 50 reviews for it and it still has 4 1/2 stars out of 5. So that should be worth trying! (And I think it's just fried cabbage and butter!)

Here is a link that might be useful: cabbabe recipes at recipezaar

Yes, cabbage does store quite a long time buried in the ground with the roots upward above-ground. Cover with a goodly heap of leaves or straw to protect against hard freezes. This works in cold climates - probably not australia.

Hi all, new here. I like using cabbage for vegetable beef stew. A head of cabbage, a large bottle of V8 instead of tomato juice, corn, lima beans, green beans, potatoes, celery, carrots, and a decent cut of beef diced in small cubes. The seasonings and subsequent amounts will vary depending on personal taste, but I toss in salt, black pepper, a little garlic powder, chili powder and some other spices if I'm in the mood for experimenting. Just boil the cabbage until it's mostly soft and toss in the carrots and potatoes to begin softening them up. Next add the rest of the ingredients and stir every so often a minute or two at a time to disintegrate the cabbage so it thickens up the stew. Sorry I couldn't be specific on the amounts, but I never make the same stew twice since I'm always trying out something new with it.

I really only have it in boiled dinners or cole slaw (saur kraut on occasion- usually when I order a Ruben). Kimchi comes to mind as well.

PETA was on about chickens last year, because they are such inteligent animals, who can resist them, anyways they said that cabbage should be hung in there enclosures to give them something to peck at, now, its PETA so chances are its either an outright lie or majorly streached truth (If you have a problem with that e-mail me personally at opcnup@gmail.com) but it could be something to do with one or two heads.