My mother's cabbage rolls

As you can see from the condition of the recipe card, I've been making my mother's cabbage rolls for many, many years.

I love them. Ken loves them. They're easy. They're delicious.

A helpful hint before you try wrapping cabbage leaves around the hamburg-rice mixture:

Use a sharp knife to cut a cone-shaped hollowed-out area in the core of the cabbage, then place the
cabbage in the freezer, uncovered, overnight.

The next day take the frozen cabbage from the freezer and immediately place it into a pot of boiling water.

Let the cabbage sit in the hot water for ten minutes or so.

When you remove it from the water, the softened leaves will come off the head of cabbage easily and will be soft and pliable to work with. I learned this trick years after I'd been fighting with uncooperative cabbage leaves that wanted to tear and become a mess.

Here is a "glob" of the hamburg/onion/egg mixture ready to be rolled into the cabbage leaf.

Here it is rolled up, with another cabbage leaf ready to receive the hamburg/rice mixture. (These are actually half-leaves. The outer leaves are large enough to accommodate two hamburg fillings, so I cut the leaves in half. Once I get closer to the center of the cabbage, I use one full leaf per filling.

The cabbage rolls are now topped with tomato soup. I actually put some tomato soup in the bottom of the Dutch oven before adding the cabbage rolls. I also add a final sprinkling of fresh-ground pepper before putting the pot on the stove. I love pepper. I also add one bay leaf.

Um-ummm. Just like my mother used to make!