On Sukkot, a Great-Grandmother’s Stuffed Cabbage Helps Seal One’s Fate
Photos by Armando Rafael
Shared by Tamar Raskas Benovitz
Recipe Roots: Poland > The Bronx > Westchester, NY > St. Louis > Westchester, NY > Jerusalem
“We always had a sukkah,” says Tamar Raskas Benovitz who grew up in a small Orthodox community in St. Louis. “There were years when it was freezing and we were outside in our winter coats and then there were those weird years and you got an untimely heatwave…. It was always unpredictable, but stuffed cabbage was a given.”
Serving stuffed foods, which symbolize the abundance of the harvest holiday, is a custom shared across many Jewish communities. In Tamar’s family, the sealing of the stuffed cabbage leaves also nods to the idea of one’s fate for the year ahead being sealed on Shemini Atzeret, the day that follows Sukkot.
Tamar’s grandparents Francine and Murray in the mid-to-late 1940s.
The recipe, made with ground meat and rice, tucked into leaves of cabbage and cooked in a tomato sauce with brown sugar and raisins, came from her great-grandmother Rebecca, who emigrated from Poland to New York in the early 1900s. Tamar’s other side of the family also made stuffed cabbage, but Rebecca’s version, she says, was “what stuffed cabbage was meant to taste like.”
Rebecca passed down her recipe when her son married. “When my grandmother married my grandfather, she really didn’t know how to cook and [Rebecca] taught her everything,” says Tamar. She remembers her grandmother Francine making the stuffed cabbage when she would visit her in New York. “It was a food that you cooked with love and to show your family that you cared for them — and to celebrate,” she adds.
Tamar’s mother was the one responsible for the recipe at Sukkot meals, serving it alongside recipes like butternut squash soup that the family borrowed from American Thanksgiving and fall traditions. Over the years, “The Sukkot meal for my family morphed into an almost harvest type pre-Thanksgiving meal,” says Tamar. “It was a synthesis of our American and Jewishness.”
Ten years ago, Tamar and her husband moved with their five daughters to Jerusalem where they celebrate the holiday with dishes like rack of lamb with pomegranate seeds, chicken with dried fruit, a pumpkin soup and of course the stuffed cabbage is always on the table in the sukkah. “I never skip it,” she says.
Stuffed Cabbage
This recipe includes a simple 48 hour hands-off process of freezing and thawing the cabbage to soften the leaves for stuffing.
Serves: 6-8
Time: 3 hours, plus 48 hours to freeze and thaw the cabbage
Ingredients
1 medium-large green cabbage
Sauce
1 (15-ounce) can of tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 lemon, juiced
¼ cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons raisins
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
Filling
1 ½ pounds ground beef
¼ cup rice (optional)
1 medium onion, grated or diced finely
1 clove garlic, minced
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
½ lemon, juiced
Instructions:
Freeze the cabbage for 24 hours. Then defrost in the refrigerator for another 24 hours. This will wilt the leaves and make them easier to roll once stuffed. Cut the thick core out of the center of the cabbage, and separate the leaves onto a plate. Set aside.
Make the sauce: In a large pot or Dutch oven, mix the tomato sauce, water, lemon juice, brown sugar, raisins, and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer for 30 minutes while you make your filling.
Make the filling: In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, rice (if using), onion, garlic, egg, sugar, salt, lemon juice.
Starting with your largest cabbage leaf, place a generous spoonful of filling at the base of the leaf, fold in the sides and roll up the leaf, sealing it well. Based on the size of each cabbage leaf, the amount of filling will vary, but make sure it is fully sealed inside.
Gently place the rolled cabbage leaves in the sauce, seam side down. Repeat with the remaining filling, and nestling the rolls tightly along the base of the pot to secure them, and then layering on top.
Once all leaves are in the pot, press down to make sure they are covered with sauce. Then cover the pot, and simmer on low for 2 hours, or until the cabbage leaves are easily pierced with a knife.
Serve warm.
