Make Cabbage Pizza-Style For Triple The Flavor

We definitely love a preparation that adds big flavor to cabbage — we recently became fixated on haluski, a Polish-style dish with cabbage and noodles that's seriously filling. Making cabbage pizza-style is a hack that adds not only deliciousness to your veg, but the ability to customize dinner just the way you like your pizza. There are two distinct ways that you can go about turning your cabbage into a pizza dupe. First, you can either cut your cabbage heads into "steaks" (we already love preparing cabbage that way for meaty appeal) and then roast them before topping generously. Or, you can make a skillet "crust" out of cabbage shreds and egg for a carb-free base. When slathered with sauce, cheese, and toppings, you'll absolutely savor your cabbage pizza-style.

One complaint that we often hear about cabbage — an unfair criticism, in our book — is that its taste is bland. Turning your cabbage into a pizza analog lends tremendous flavor to this healthy, versatile veggie ... and it utilizes ingredients that many home cooks already keep on hand. The addition of sauce, cheese, and toppings to cabbage jazzes up. If family pizza night is a regular dinner on your rotation, you might find that a cabbage base turns your entrees into something more interesting and differently nutritious than plain ol' dough. Vegetarians and omnivores can appreciate this dish equally, as the choice of toppings can rotate around one's dietary preferences. We've seen some great tips for pizza-style cabbage, some of which focus on texture and some of which focus on added nutrition, and we're pretty intrigued by all of them.

One fascinating way that we've seen cabbage cooked pizza-style is with a layer of pressed ground chicken on top. When roasted in the oven, your cabbage cooks up with a crusty layer of pure protein that you can then layer with sauce, cheeses, and so on. A chicken base atop your cabbage foundation adds both protein and texture, but it not really the play for veggie-based eaters. If you want a more solid bottom to your cabbage pizza, utilize eggs as a binder as discussed above. Of course, you can get good texture on cabbage steaks alone if you crisp them up with ample roasting before getting to the toppings. The choices are yours, and we feel like you can't really go wrong.

Likewise, your choice of sauce can change up your pizza-style cabbage as well. Keep in mind that the difference between pizza sauce and pasta sauce comes down to cooking, but feel free to use what you have on hand, be it alfredo, marinara, or pesto. Use a combination of cheese — Asiago, parm, and mozzarella are all good candidates — to customize the top of your pizza and get it golden under the broiler. You can also top your pizza-style cabbage with many of the same things you love on a pie, like pepperoni, roasted veggies, garlic, or a balsamic vinegar drizzle. Set your cabbage up like a pizza bar and let your loved ones dress up their own plates! You might find that this preparation of cabbage is as fun as it is tasty ... and no two ways of making it need ever be the same.