Love cabbage soup but hate the fuss of making it?
Me too.
I don’t know about you, but “fast” and “easy” are not typically the words I would normally choose to describe what it’s like working with cabbage, including recipes for soup. In fact, there are approximately a gazillion things I’d much rather do with my time than core out and chop up a cabbage, no matter how yummy the recipe sounds. Working from home does not mean extra time to cook.
That said, I do love and often crave a warm, hearty bowl of cabbage soup and so I became determined to find an easier way to have it. Enter my flair for finding shortcuts to overly complicated… anything.
I recently noticed friends talking about a “cabbage roll soup” recipe they had found online and decided to go searching for it. The first Google result produced a delicious-looking option which I was eager to learn more about… until I noticed it had 19 ingredients and a fairly labor intensive set of directions which included coring and chopping a head of cabbage. Surely flavorful, but not simple. Numerous other attempts to search for an easier one yielded similar results.
Hoping I could find something I could throw together fast, I adjusted my search to “easy cabbage soup” and looked some more. Every recipe involved coring and chopping. Ummm…. no.
I decided to just write out a short list of ingredients I thought would make a yummy soup, and headed to the store to get them. I did indeed pick up a cabbage and put it in my cart, thinking perhaps I could skip the coring and cutting bit by just shredding it with a grater.
And then, an epiphany. Of sorts. Shredded…cabbage… is cole slaw!
I promptly returned the cabbage to its original spot and headed straight for the salad aisle. Sure enough, bagged and PRE-shredded cole slaw was on sale for under $2. Done deal. Does bagged cole slaw make a decent soup? I can assure you it tastes as great as it looks! I also like the added splash of color it lends to the soup, as it also includes some chunks of purple cabbage and shredded carrots.
Enjoy this recipe and the time you’ll save by not tediously coring! Please leave feedback if you try it, I’d love to know your thoughts and what (if anything) you chose to add to it!
Fast, Easy and Hearty Cabbage Soup
Notes
If desired, add even more flavor with some additional ingredients. Some great options include:
3 medium boiling potatoes, cut into cubes
fresh ground pepper to taste
a dash of chili powder (some chili powders may contain salt)
1/2 c chopped cooking onion
garlic salt or garlic powder to taste
4 beef bouillon cubes
dash Worcestershire sauce, to taste
Ingredients
- 1 lb pkg lean ground beef
- 3 cans (28oz / 795mL each) unsalted stewed diced tomatoes
- 4 C water
- 1 pkg (14 oz / 397g) pre-made coleslaw
Instructions
- In a large, nonstick frying pan, cook beef over medium heat, until just browned and crumbled.
- Drain fat and transfer beef to a 6L / 6.3qt stock pot.
- Add contents of the 3 cans of diced tomatoes on top of the beef.
- Add all 4 cups of water to the beef and tomatoes.
- Slowly add entire package of coleslaw to the soup mixture, stirring gently with a spoon until all of the coleslaw is covered.
- Bring to a boil on medium-high heat, and then reduce heat to simmer for approximately 25-30 minutes.
