Smothered cabbage is a common New Orleans side dish. Cabbage, especially when pan-fried by my mom or cooked down with pickle meat by my great-grandmother, ranked high on my list of favorite veggies. It’s not fancy or pretty, but it is tasty and relatively good for you. While my recipe is somewhat of a culture clash–Irish veggie meets Italian sausage meets Greek cheese–it’s still familiar enough to transport me back to my great-grandmother’s kitchen. Powerful stuff.
“Smothered,” in my own words, means to cook the heck out of something. That’s exactly what you’ll need to do to the cabbage in this recipe. You’ll want to cook it until it’s almost wilted beyond recognition. It’s at that point, and not a minute sooner, that the cabbage will have absorbed all of the flavorful goodness from the bacon fat, sausage and seasoning vegetables.