 |
| Eeeew, grown-up food! |
When I was a kid, one of my favorite things was going out to lunch at Big Boy with my mom. I could never understand why she always got a Big Boy Combination (eww! sauce on burgers!) and cole slaw (eww! cabbage!) because everything about it looked and sounded gross – the only thing worse was when she’d get a bowl of cabbage soup to go along with it (because eww! cabbage!). Naturally I grew up to love both these things. Now that I’ve mastered the at-home Big Boy burger, it was probably inevitable that an afternoon spent riffling through the To Cook folder turned up a recipe for Elias Brothers cabbage soup, cut from the Food section of the Detroit News sometime in the 90s.
(After we ate, we always split a hot fudge ice cream cake. Not being much of a dessert family, this was a huge treat - and my mom would always let me have the maraschino cherry. I suspect a future blog post is going to feature this. Maybe I can do a whole Big-Boy-lunch-of-my-childhood re-creation?)
I’m sure there are many, many tasty versions of cabbage soup
out there. I’m sure your grandma’s or your aunt’s recipe is “so much better”
(i.e., more authentic, more Polish, whatever). I don’t care. I misplaced this
recipe for about 15 years and when I finally found it and made it, it was EVEN
BETTER than I remembered. All those versions I tried in the meantime were
simply inferior. Even my kids like this soup. It is the best, and you should go
make a big pot of it really soon.
Childhood Flashback Cabbage Soup
46 oz tomato juice
4 beef or chicken bouillon cubes (no, you can't use stock with this)
2 cups chopped celery
1 ½ tbsp dried onion flakes
4 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 small cabbage, shredded
4 carrots, sliced or shredded
Combine tomato juice and bouillon cubes in a large pot.
Heat, stirring, until bouillon cubes are dissolved. Add the remaining
ingredients and simmer 1 ½ hours or until cabbage and carrots are tender. Add a
ton of freshly ground black pepper.
