Fried Cabbage- and Southern Misconceptions
I’m going to start this post by letting you know, in the interest of full disclosure, that while the recipe I am bringing you today serves about four or five people (give or take), I ate every blessed bit of it all by myself. ~grins~ I know, I’m proud of me, too. It took me more than one meal but I’m no quitter! It’s that kind of steady work ethic that has gotten me where I am today. “Well, Christy, where exactly are you today?” I’m glad you asked coz I’m gonna tell ya. I’m waist high in laundry, ankle deep in dirty dishes, shoulder high in kids, and about as happy as a pig in slop! Life couldn’t be any better.
So now on to the business of bacon. As I’ve been focusing on filling up my bacon grease jar all week I’m going to bring you one more bacon dish that utilizes both the drippings and the bacon itself. I dearly love cabbage in all forms. Raw, boiled, fried, and even sauerkraut. In fact, there would have been a lot more in this dish had I not of eaten so much of it raw while I was chopping it. Out of all the ways I eat cabbage though, this is the absolute best in my eyes.
Don’t let the “fried” part scare you off. Some folks hear “fried” in relation to Southern food and they automatically think vats of oil, like we sit around in our hoop skirts on the lawns of plantation houses gnawing on fried chicken all day long. ~sighs~. God love’em. You know I was talking to my friend Jyl the other day and we were talking about how neither one of us have ever known a rich plantation owning Southerner, but all of the movies and such would have you believe that the majority of us are descended from them. Boggles the mind, really.
With regards to fried foods though, there is a simple reason why so many of our recipe titles start out with “fried”. You see, we refer to a large skillet as a “Frying pan” and so everything we cook in it usually gets labeled “fried”. We’re not big on fancy words like “saute’”, which is really what we are doing here. The definition of “Saute” is cooking something in a small amount of fat over high heat. No, Southern cooking doesn’t put on any airs, so we just call it “fried”. You ask any old timer in the South what sounds better, Fried Cabbage or Sauteed Cabbage, and I’d be willing to put money on them choosing the first.
As far as the misconception about all Southern food being deep fried goes, I’ve decided that when anyone thinks like that about us, I’m just gonna let them keep on thinking that way and I think you should, too. That just means more of the good stuff everyone else!
Lets fry some up now..
Ingredients are simple, as they are in all of the best dishes! Cabbage and bacon. We’ll also salt and pepper it a bit.
Chop your cabbage up however you like to chop your cabbage up. I do mine in medium sized pieces but some people prefer larger or smaller, whatever cranks yer tractor.
I have to quit chopping at this point because the longer I chop the more I eat and I want to have some left over to actually cook.
The instructions begin with my favorite sentence in the world: “First, you fry you up some bacon…”
Anytime a recipe starts with that you know it’s gonna be good. (be sure to check out my sweet and sour green bean post!)
I spooned out all of the grease except for about two tablespoons
This is what you’re left with after that is done. It may not look like much, but it is the makings for some fine cabbage!
Place all of your cabbage back in the skillet
Crumble your bacon and add that, too. Stir it up a bit and cook on medium high heat for about five minutes, stirring constantly.
Reduce heat to low and cover skillet. Continue cooking just until cabbage is as tender as you like it, five to ten minutes.
When it gets as tender as you like it to be, or when you just can’t wait any longer, dig in!
Fried Cabbage
Ingredients
- 5-6 strips of bacon (more or less if you like)
- 1 head cabbage, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- In large skillet, fry bacon until crisp. Place bacon on paper towel lined plate and remove all of the bacon grease from the pan except for about two tablespoons. Place chopped cabbage in skillet and crumple cooked bacon on top of it. Cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. Reduce heat to low and cover. Continue cooking until cabbage is done to your desired tenderness, five to ten minutes more. Salt and pepper to taste.
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Ingredients
- 5-6 strips of bacon (more or less if you like)
- 1 head cabbage, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- In large skillet, fry bacon until crisp. Place bacon on paper towel lined plate and remove all of the bacon grease from the pan except for about two tablespoons. Place chopped cabbage in skillet and crumple cooked bacon on top of it. Cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. Reduce heat to low and cover. Continue cooking until cabbage is done to your desired tenderness, five to ten minutes more. Salt and pepper to taste.
Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples,
don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
~Bill Meyer
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Thank you SO MUCH for all of your wonderful comments on my posts. I hope to have time to respond to more once school starts back but I want you to know that reading your comments is the thing I enjoy most about Southern Plate!
Gratefully,
Christy
Posted by Christy Jordan
on Jul 9 2010. Filed under Side Dishes.
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I like to cook Brussels Sprouts this way and add a little garlic pepper. If I’m out of bacon I just use olive oil and then add some chopped chicken breasts. Soooooo good!
Out of bacon?!?! Lawd, child — where are y’all from??
You know, as children we have the tooth fairy. I seriously think that as adults we need a bacon fairy.
I’m jes sayin…
HOW do I get my name on the bacon fairy’s list!!!!
I love cabbage, too. Raw, fried, boiled, make me an offer!
This looks great Christy! I like to add onions, a bay leaf and a bottle of beer along with the bacon. Cover and let braise until tender. Since I don’t keep beer just sitting around, I have also used apple juice. Especially good with a pork roast and “fried” apples.
Keep it southern girl!
Made the fried cabbage for supper, added onion to it. Fam raved about it!!! They ate a whole head of cabbage! My MIL used to make this for the hubby growing up, but she put sugar in hers. I told him he could add that at the table if he liked! Cooked extra bacon (and started me a jar of grease!) so I could make the breakfast casserole ahead and put in fridge tonight…for .fast baking for the morning. I have a house full of family for the weekend and they are going to all know who Christy is by Sunday : ) Thanks so much for your help! I will work cornbread made with bacon drippings in to our menu this weekend!
There is just no wrong way to fix it.. but beans, cornbread and fried potatoes to go along with it can’t be beat.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
hugs jo in Sapulpa
My veins are filled with mostly bacon and fatback grease!!!! My mom says thats why us southern girls don’t have any wrinkles! HEE!HEE!HEE! I am in my 50′s and Mom is in her 80′s and she doesn’t look a day over 70! I always have a pot of pinto beans with my cabbage and cornbread,simple country cookin’ can’t be beat!
Dear Christy
Of course all Americans are rich and live in mansions! I know this because I watch films which tell me this……………………lol
I’ve also watched a programme on the Telly about “cribs” and they are enormous houses – nothing to do with babies at all…………hahaha
~giggles~ And all Brits are descended from royalty and live in castles. I think I will have my servants book me a trip to go visit you in your castle, do you happen to have an extra throne I can sit on and can I borrow one of your diamond tiaras?
hehehe
I just love you to bits Sue! I need to send you some cake mix one of these days!
Gratefully,
christy
This looks so good! I love cabbage in any form too. Why is it so tasty?
This is like what i make too. even the kids will eat it, i put in a Tbs of brown sugar and some of the “Better than bullion” b/c its not too salty. then finish with some smart balance. i like to “wrap” my drained bacon skillet* in saran to save a day or two, after cooling it & removing most grease, but lots of brown bits remaining. so its lot o flavor to cook cabbage or vegs in. . Cabbage is the first food i remember sitting on my grandma’s lab & eating with some corn bread mushed in it….. southern babyfood. *the skillet i use is one of those cast iron but coated blue skillets. works great for saving the browned bacon. Go Christy! up to her shoulders in kids
that is the important part.
PS from Susan, i do add a splash of vinegar at the end too. usually like the mild rice wine vnegar but even apple cider is good. the earlier post about the fancy champaign vinegar…. i have gotten it before in stores like TJ Max & such and it is delicious for salads. when you make salads with it people will ask for your recipe. so i agree, it is fabulous but you don’t usually find it in reg grocery stores. I have used low salt chicken broth in place of water if i am out of Better than bullion base. its another “secret” ing. that makes yr recipes tasty.
Fried cabbage with ketchup is the way our family enjoys this dish.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who likes a little food with my ketchup!
I reckon I am late in getting to this recipe…but I am a true Southern gal…you just cannot beat fried cabbage! I will eat cabbage in almost every way…cannot seem to take to the sauerkraut…and I haven’t found anyone’s fried cabbage I cannot eat…unless they just destroy all semblance of cabbage by overcooking! There ain’t nothing better than some good ole fried cabbage and a hunk of yellow cornbread that has been cooked with that crispy bottom and sides…mmmmm mmm! My, just makes my mouth water thinking about it! Tain’t no one can cook greens the way folks down here in the South do it….you ain’t had better when you get some of their greens and cornbread either!
PREACH It, Sharon!!!! Girl you KNOW what you’re talking about!
Gratefully,
Christy
YUUUMMM!!! I loooove fried cabbage, and I’m like you Christy, anything that starts with bacon is bound to be good!
Thanks for posting, even the simplest ones of all! 
Your such a blessing! Hope you have a great day!
God Bless,
Vickie
oh Vickie thank you so much for just the affirmation I need! Sometimes I think about posting a recipe and I think to myself “thats too simple, maybe I shouldn’t post it” and those are usually the ones that are the best received! I’m learning that if I like it, and it is technically a recipe, no matter how simple it is other folks seem to like it too.
I hope you know that you are truly a blessing to me as well.
Gratefully,
Christy
I’m from the Midwest and love your site for southern cookin…..nothing is to simple….keep it coming!
Thankful,
Sandy
I do this with a generous helping of butter, another Southern favorite. I really think every recipe should start ‘take a stick of butter’. I am old enough that butter when I was young did not come in a stick. It was a round cake fashioned with a butter paddle. Love your site!
Sammie, I think you are absolutely right about how every good recipe should start. Maybe we should say “First you take a stick of butter, then you fry you up some bacon..”
hehe!
Food at its finest!
Gratefully,
Christy
Guess there is a first time for everything. Just wasn’t on my Irish mama/Italian fathers list of things to cook. I’m gonna go for it!
YAY! Let me know how you like it, Barbara! Did you see that I found where you can get the imitation cheese? Our Krogers has it!
Gratefully,
Christy
Hey Christy, After reading this I had to try it. Here at home we called it steamed cabbage and didn’t use the bacon and drippings. Basically boiled it down, added a stick of butter and salt and pepper to taste but I was hungry to bacon too so did your version. I can say honestly that my husband and I ate all of it over the course of 2 days. I had a large head of cabbage and wish I had more it was so good. Love your posts.
oh Lori thank you so much! Now you got me thinking about it again. I think I’m gonna have to go get more cabbage and fry me up a mess of it today! lol
Gratefully,
Christy
I’ve been doing this for years…never knew I had southern roots…..Southern California maybe!! Yummy!
Southern Cal works for me!
Oh Christy, you really are a girl after my own heart. I love cabbage also. And anyway you cook it, it is good. Think I’m going to be sending my husband to the store for me. He really doesn’t mind. Bacon and cabbage, think that will end up being my side tomorrow. lol. I am patiently or trying to, waiting for your cook book to come out. I have order two. But I will probably order a couple more. Will make nice gifts, for daughter in laws. But October seems so far away. So good thing you post recipes everyday. Your doing a great job girl, keeping us all happy.
Hey Trixie, thank you so much, you just warmed my heart! I hope I get to see you on my book tour! I’m guessing you live kinda close based on your email address so I’m crossing my fingers!
October does seem terribly far away. Fortunately for me there is still a ton of work going on setting things up for the book release so it seems like every day I have more and more I have to get done – it is helping the time pass because I can’t wait to see it myself!
Thank you so much, I hope your day is as wonderful as you’ve helped mine to be.
Gratefully,
Christy
i learned fried cabbage from a cajun friend, so before the cabbage goes in you saute’ a whole mess of onion and bellpepper in your bacon grease. my kids love it done this way, even the non-cabbage eaters.
Lawd have mercy, I’d love it to!!!! What time is dinner Mama Jane?
~gets her running shoes on~
sugar pea, you are as welcome as the flowers in may anytime.
I love cabbage also. I have boiled some with onions, and added polish sausage when done with red pepper flakes. Delicious!!!!!
Christy this is on the menu for tonight. Another way I make cabbage is to chop it up, put it in a saucepan then add some milk to cook it in. When tender I add some butter and some Wondra flour and it makes a quick and easy white sauce. Add some salt and pepper to taste and you’re good to go.
Christy that’s the only way to make fried cabbage!! Yummy. make a pone of bread in a iron skillet with bacon grease in the skillet of course!! we southerners never go hungry!!
Finally got to try this tonight – my family LOVED it!! I second the comment about “simple” recipes – those things that some people just seem born knowing how to make – but I need that extra help in the kitchen! Thanks, Christy!!!
YUMMY! I love- love- love cabbage! I could eat a whole head by myself-give me some butter, salt & pepper and Im good! I havent had it fried in forever, im thinkin I might have to this weekend…mmmmmm
Christy, this is one of my favorite dinners. Just plain yummy! But I add onion with the bacon and season with garlic along with the S&P.
On another note, my husband is Lithuanian. Went we visited the Mother Land (the land of bacon, cabbage and potatoes!) back in 2001, we were served a cabbage and bacon soup. It tasted like fried cabbage with some broth added and cooked for a while. And it was topped with mashed potatoes. Delicious!
We made it tonite and it was so easy and tasty–will be hard to boil it ever again…except for making cabbage rolls…love those too!!! Thanks Christy
This sounds great. My mom always made a spicy version of this where she added a drained can of rotel with the cabbage. Delish!
Mama also made fried cabbage: grate cabbage into a skillet. Add a chunk of butter, a teaspoon or two (or three) of sugar, a little salt and pepper, and about a quarter cup of water. Cover and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally as the butter melts. When the water is boiling merrily, uncover and turn down to simmer. Cook until most of the water is boiled away. I wish I could make this and some hominy for supper, but nobody but me likes it around here.
You know the more I read you the more I just know we must be kin some how. I grew up eating cabbage very much like this, ‘cept we chop the bacon to cook it. When it’s starting brown a bit we throw in some onions. Then drain off the fat when the onions are tender and throw in the cabbage. Nothing and I mean nothing smells as good as bacon and onions cooking up.
For a full meal deal, my mom added shredded carrots. Then when it was all nice and done, she’d mix in some rice, beat bout a half dozen eggs and pour them over the top and cook till the eggs all nice done. We called this Japanese rice ( mom got the Americanized recipe from a Japanese friend of hers). We( sisters) all still fix it in our own versions of it today. I like a few bean sprouts in mine and less or no rice.
Thanks for reminding me just how good fried cabbage can be. Think I’ll pick up a head this week and make up a mess.
This is also one of my favorite dishes. If i’m out of bacon, which is rare, i’ll use smoked sausage and i love to add onions & garlic to this brings the flavor up. Very good.
I am new to your website and I absolutely LOVE it and your wonderful recipes!!!
Christy,
I have been wanting some cabbage since I saw this recipe. I know that cabbage is not in season right now and there was not a single head at Walmart today when I was there.. I wanted to cry. I did see a bag of the already cut up fixings for Cole Slaw.. Both green and purple cabbage and carrots.. and thought why not.. so I got it came home and followed your recipe Except I did add a hand full of chopped onion to the bacon grease before I added the cabbage.. It was wonderful my hubby raved about it. I now have a new way to fix cabbage.. Thank you so much for all your wonderful recipes. I am having a ball cooking now..
Jeannie Q
Christy, I seriously have a girl crush on you. I Love fried cabbage. My mom adds onions and bell pepper. No matter how many times she’s shown me how to cook it, mine never tastes as good as hers. Guess I’ll have to sit back and just let her handle it for me
.
Your website is certainly full of remarkable information and facts and also is actually extremely enjoyable to read through.Properly carried out:)
this is the best recipe i`ve made in a long time
my spouse looks up and said i can`t cut eating stewd cabbage!! but this is the best i have ever ate ….
this should be sold in restraunts
this is a real compliment beleive me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks,
karen,
from karen`s kitchen *from cullman, al.*
I made this tonight! It was so easy and turned out great. I was a little concerned that my husband wouldn’t like it, but he did. I only had already cooked bacon (cooked it over the weekend) so I had to cook the cabbage in a mix of bacon grease and butter, and I cooked some chopped onion for a little while before adding the cabbage. In any case, it was absolutely delicious and I will make it again for sure! Please post more simple recipes like this because I wouldn’t have thought of it
This brings back so many memories of my mother’s kitchen. She fixed this a lot and we loved it. My husband is not a cooked cabbage lover. In fact, he just plain doesn’t like it. But, I am going to fix this tonight with pinto beans, cornbread and iced tea. If he doesn’t like it, too bad. More for me (lol). Thanks so much for this website. I have enjoyed it so much. This old southern girl loves your recipes.
I love cabbage too and had never tried it with just bacon. I am eating this right now and having a hard time stopping before I eat the whole bowl! My grandmother-in-law has a recipe with cabbage, kielbasa sausage and egg noodle, fried it all up and throw on some salt and pepper. Amazing. She was Croatian and had lots of simple but yummy recipes we all enjoy.
I use olive oil to fry up my cabbage – between diabetes and high cholesterol….the olive oil is a better alternative…but lawd a mercy – it sure is good!
LOVED, loved, loved it! My husband and i are both southerners by birth. But neither of us had ever had fried cabbage- excuse me “sauteed”. The family has already requested it again. Now that is a compliment! Thanks.
I have had people who swear they hate cooked cabbage eat this ’til they pop. I use a whole pound of bacon (cut it up in pieces first – fries up quicker). Fry it in a dutch oven (keep all the grease) an toss 2 heads of chunked up cabbage, 1 or 2 sliced onions a little beef broth (just to keep some moisture in the bottom). My family of 5 can polish off 2 heads without blinking.
I made this for dinner last night and my husband absolutely loved it…..It was my first time ever cooking cabbage…..Thank you Christy for the recipe….I will definitely be cooking it more often…..Looking foward to trying some of your other recipes as well!!!
I made fried cabbage for my husband for the first time today. He loved it once I added a few red pepper flakes. Awesome!
My grandmother boils cabbage with potatoes. She cooks that down enough for the potatoes to get tender then adds sausage to it. Cooks a little while longer and then empties into a bowl and adds a gob of butter to it and stirs it up well. Add a mess of cornbread to that and you’ve got a complete meal.
I made the fried cabbage last week for the first time and it was very nicely received. My DH and Father-in-law ate it with glee. I still don’t like cabbage, but I was proud they liked it so much!
I did’nt like cooked cabbage at all until i made fried cabbage. I use bacon, or the cheaper, bacon ends & pieces, sliced onions & to make it a meal I may add 1/2 lb sliced smoked sausage. It is too die for! I could it eat til I pop.
When I make fried cabbage I put in 2 tb. spoons of cider vineagr and 2 pks. of splenda . It is wonderful. Makes is sweet and sour.
Instead of bacon I use maple sausage, then of course it needs to be “smothered”.
Mom made this on alot,( and yes, I still have a drippins jar, clean up here in Ohio lol.) On “special occasions she add cheese sauce and ( POOOOF!! ) “scalloped cabbage” is born =)
I made this as a side for our Sunday dinner today, along with the chicken and dumplings and butter rolls for dessert. I didn’t have bacon so I used Conecuh Sausage. So good. I think I may eat it all before anyone else gets to it