Autumn-Spiced Braised Red Cabbage (includes Thermomix method)

A really delicious way of cooking red cabbage, with warm spices and fruity notes.

This is perfect as a side dish to compliment game, pork, duck, turkey and even sausages - and it's brilliant served with Christmas dinner too! This will make a good quantity (it should feed eight to twelve easily, more if part of a large meal with other vegetable side dishes), and if frozen in food bags with the air squeezed out, it will keep for months and months in the freezer.

If you have leftovers in the fridge, they're also nice cold with sliced roast meats, cheese, pork pie etc. It re-heats perfectly, and is therefore great to make the day before, or even well in advance and freeze, if you're cooking for a hungry crowd and want to minimise preparation and cooking on the actual day!

You'll need a large dish with a lid to cook this - preferably pyrex or earthenware, and it will be a lot quicker to prepare the ingredients if you have a food processor with a slicing blade (or see Thermomix method).

Calories, for those counting -129 for a twelfth.

Ingredients

• 1.1 to 1.2kg red cabbage (about 2 medium cabbages, weight after coring) [372]
• 3 medium onions (red, if you have them, around 140g each - 350-400g total after peeling) [164]
• 4 tart eating apples (e.g. Granny Smith’s - about 400g) [212]
• 2 inch piece of ginger, peeled
• 1 orange, zest and juice of [43]
• 40g sugar (soft brown if you have it, or your preferred sugar e.g. rapadura etc.) [157]
• 1-2 tsp salt
• 1 x 15ml tbsp ground cinammon (or tuck in a couple of cinammon sticks) [15]
• A good grating of nutmeg (around 1/2 tsp) [13]
• ½ tsp ground cloves (or 1 tsp whole cloves, but warn those eating it!) [3]
• 70ml/g cider vinegar (or use white or red wine vinegar) [13]
• 300ml good quality medium dry cider [112]
• 50g butter [368]
• 2 tbsp redcurrant jelly (or more/less to taste) [80]

Method

(See below for Thermomix method in italics)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150C / Gas Mark 2 and dig out your biggest casserole dish that has a tight fitting lid (or use two smaller ones).

2. Remove the roots / cores, outer leaves (and any tough ribs from the cabbage) and slice/shred the cabbage and onions (after peeling) – this is easiest done with the slicing attachment on a food processor – just cut into quarters and eighths, push through the chute on top and you’ll be done in five minutes.

3. Peel, quarter, core and slice the apples (they can also go through the food processor).  Everything can go into the same bowl (or casserole dish, if it’s big enough to toss everything together in). Zest the orange, and grate the ginger onto the mix, and squeeze the juice over (particularly over the apples, to stop them going brown).

4. Add the sugar, 1 tsp of the salt, spices and vinegar, and toss everything together until evenly mixed.

Pour over the cider, dot with butter, and put on the lid and/or foil. Place in the oven for 2 – 2 ½ hours, stirring every half an hour or so until tender and dark purply-red.

5. Ten minutes before you finish cooking it (don’t worry, ten minutes isn’t going to hurt it if you think it’s already cooked!), add the redcurrant jelly give it a really good stir, then taste it. If you like it as it is, then great – you’re done. If you want more acid you can add extra vinegar at this point, for a bit more tartness, if you want it more savoury, add the extra teaspoon of salt (depending on how it tastes) and if you want it sweeter, add more redcurrant jelly once you’ve stirred the above in, and tasted it again. A slightly sweeter cabbage is also good cold with cold meats, cheese etc. Put in for the last ten minutes to make sure the jelly is all melted and distributed, then a final stir and you're done! Enjoy.

Thermomix method

Pre-heat the oven to 150C / Gas Mark 2 and dig out your biggest casserole dish that has a tight fitting lid (or use two smaller ones).

Remove the outer leaves from the cabbages, quarter them, and cut out the cores. Peel the onions, cut off the root and quarter, and wash then peel the orange zest (avoiding the white pith) from the orange. Slice the peeled ginger into 'coins'.

Weigh the 40g sugar into the bowl, add the orange zest and blitz for 20 seconds / Speed 10. Scrape out into your casserole dish (or a large bowl if you're cooking in two smaller dishes) and then set the blades running at Speed 8, and drop in your ginger coins to finely chop them.

Add the orange juice to the bowl, weigh in 70g cider vinegar, then peel, quarter and core the apples and add them to the bowl too. Chop the apple 3 seconds / speed 4 until roughly chopped (doing this with the orange juice and vinegar means the apple gets coated in it and won't brown) and then tip out and add to the dish with the orange zest and sugar.

Add the onion quarters to the bowl, and chop 8-10 seconds / speed 4 until roughly chopped, then tip out into the casserole dish with the other chopped ingredients.

Add 400-500g of cored cabbage quarters at a time to the bowl, and chop in batches for 3 seconds / Speed 5. If you notice any particularly big chunks when adding each batch to the casserole dish, just fish them out and add to the next batch of cabbage quarters to be chopped. This will give you a relatively chunky texture, if you'd prefer it finer, just chop for an extra couple of seconds (which will also shorten the cooking time - or put through a food processor on the slicing attachment, and it will take 2 - 2 1/2 hours in the oven).

Add to the casserole dish 1 tsp of the salt and all of the spices, and toss everything together until evenly mixed. 

Pour over the cider, dot with butter, and put on the lid and/or foil. Place in the oven for 3 - 4 hours, stirring every half an hour or so until tender to your liking and dark purply-red (this takes longer when the cabbage is chopped in the Thermomix, than when it is sliced with a food processor, as it is chunkier).

Ten minutes before you finish cooking it (don’t worry, ten minutes isn’t going to hurt it if you think it’s already cooked!), add the redcurrant jelly give it a really good stir, then taste it. If you like it as it is, then great – you’re done. If you want more acid you can add extra vinegar at this point, for a bit more tartness, if you want it more savoury, add the extra teaspoon of salt (depending on how it tastes) and if you want it sweeter, add more redcurrant jelly once you’ve stirred the above in, and tasted it again. A slightly sweeter cabbage is also good cold with cold meats, cheese etc. Put in for the last ten minutes to make sure the jelly is all melted and distributed, then a final stir and you're done! Enjoy.