Spiced Red Cabbage

I was anticipating fall spice flavors, and I wasn’t disappointed. This spiced red cabbage recipe is a definite keeper and was easy to put together. The cabbage had collapsed after cooking but still had a nice texture and the apples were tender through and through. This added a lovely color to the fish dish that I served with it.

This recipe is a nice introduction to spiced red cabbage. I used 1/3 cup brown sugar, and while my tasters and I found it on the sweet side, I think this would be a nice accompaniment to roasted meat. I left the heat on low after laying in the Granny Smith apples, and after cooking and stirring the apples into the cabbage, the apples were soft but still intact. The cabbage was reduced by a little more than half the original volume and there was only about 1/2 cup liquid left in the pan. I’ll make this spiced red cabbage again, but I think in the future I’ll only use 1 thinly sliced apple and decrease the sugar to 1/4 cup to minimize the sweetness.

This spiced red cabbage recipe made an easy side dish that could complement any number of pork or beef dishes. I served it with some pulled pork one night and again later in the week with corned beef. The spices lent the cabbage a good flavor, but next time I would use less than 1/3 cup brown sugar and up the vinegar to achieve a less sweet and more sour flavor. To speed up prep time, I used already ground cloves (about 1/4 teaspoon) and the 4-mm slicing blade on my Cuisinart to shred the cabbage and onion together in the same bowl. While those were cooking, I used the 2-mm slicing blade to slice the apples. Slicing everything in the same Cuisinart also minimized clean up time and made preparation easy enough for me to consider this a weeknight dish. The cabbage was done in the times indicated. It was soft and tender but not mushy or overcooked. The apples were also very soft but not so much that they lost their shape.

The spicing in this spiced red cabbage recipe was spot-on. The apples add a lot—some sweetness, some texture. This would be an excellent addition to a winter holiday table. I think I might experiment with adding cranberries—fresh or dried—in the future. We served the spiced cabbage with beef, but it would also be fantastic with pork. I used 2 apples that totaled 1 pound. Since I had nothing to do with an excess Gala apple half, I used both apples and sliced them about 1/4 inch thick. This did not seem an excessive amount in the end, even though the red cabbage I found was large, and I ended up using closer to 1 1/2 than 1 3/4 pounds. After the first 10 minutes of everything cooking together, this was very pretty. After the last 15 minutes, the bright fuchsia color was gone, and the cabbage was darker, fairly soft, and surrounded by purplish liquid. The apples were quite soft at this point and had absorbed a fair amount of the pink-purple color from the liquid and cabbage.