Meat with Cabbage

Today’s survivalism tip – how to prepare meat and cabbage. People think survivalism as some sort of rugged post-apocalyptic adventure, but most of the prepping is for everyday hardships like unemployment or other forms of poverty. Ability to make food cheaply is very important for modern survival.

The potatoes in the picture are not involved.

Ingredients:

meat about 1lb
or
meat with bones about 2lb

medium sized cabbage (about 4lb)

water about 1qt

beef bouillon (Herb ox) 3 or 4 cubes

salt heaping teaspoon

nice to add:
whole yellow or white onion(s)
ground black pepper

First, buy the ingredients.

Meat: I prefer lamb’s neck bones for taste and collagen and they make a good cooking timer, but most of the time they are sold out in a nearby market, so the second choice would be lamb shoulder chops fortified with one lamb round bone chop. Beef will also work, I prefer fattier meats like chuck roast or boneless rib. London broil is a bit dry for my taste. If the cuts include bone, the weight should be increased to get approximately 1lb of meats. Lamb’s neck bones are typically cheaper than meatier parts, beef chuck is typically cheaper than lamb shoulder chops. 10$ is a good current price for meats.

Cabbage: I prefer to buy the cheapest, usually white cabbage but sometimes cauliflower is on sale. They taste about the same, but behave slightly differently while cooking (cauliflower is slower to compress). I have not tried the more exotic varieties. Cabbage typically currently varies between about $0.80 and $1.40 so this would cost somewhere around 4 or 5 dollars.

Water: I prefer bought water to avoid chloramines. The latest water was $1.49 per gallon + crv.

Beef bouillon: Herb ox is my favorite, and typically goes 1 cube per mug of water. This is cheap, a can of few dollars lasts over multiple soups. This also stores well for a Doomsday larder.

Salt: I like cheap iodized salt, but about any other salt will do. This is not some weird ritual.

Optional onion: yellow or white, whichever is on sale. One is enough, but if you like onions, go for it. Onion soups can be tasty, too.

Optional black pepper: I prefer freshly ground for the taste, others prefer whole peppers, while some prefer no peppers.

Cooking:

0. Take a really big pot with a lid and pour a quart of water in it. Add the bouillon cubes

1a. Green cabbage: Take the cabbage and peel the wilting and or dirty surface leaves and toss them to garbage, rip the remaining leaves into the pot with water and bouillon cubes, tear the soft part of the core into the pot and toss the hard stem into garbage. The pot should be mostly full of cabbage with water in the bottom.

or:

1b. Cauliflower: I prefer the ones that come in plastic bags, but event those should be rinsed for dirt and other nasties. Check the florets for possible wilting or moldy bits and toss those into garbage, toss the good florets into the pot with water and bouillon cubes, tear the soft part of the core into the pot and toss the hard stem into garbage.

(2a. If you are adding onion(s), peel them, toss the wilting and or dirty outer peels into garbage and cut the fresh parts into the pot. Not the hard stem, which goes to garbage.)

2. Rinse the meat (with or without bones) and put it into the pot. It can stay on the top of the cabbages at the beginning.

3. Sprinkle a heaping teaspoonful of salt onto the meat and cabbages.

(3b. Grind the black pepper on the meat and cabbages or drop a few peppercorns in the mix.)

4. Cover with the lid and bring the pot to boil. Remember that only the water, somewhere below the cabbages and meat, boils.

5. Let the soup simmer at low heat until cabbages compress to the water level, mix the meat with the cabbages and continue slow boil until the meat separates from bones and can be eaten with spoon. Remember to keep the lid on! If you use lamb’s necks, the soup is ready when the vertebrae separate from each other. This will usually take a couple of hours which can be spent doing something else.

6, When the bones separate, turn the heat off, allow the pot to cool and enjoy the soup. If you kept the lid on, the water did not evaporate burning the soup.

This recipe has typically given me three or four meals. Unless I forget to eat it before it went bad.

The cost estimate for a potful is about 15 – 20$ depending on the price of meat and cabbages and if the other ingredients were already at hand or needed to be obtained or replenished (the biggest initial investment is the pot with a lid, but that can be used for other recipes, as can be the water, salt, peppers and bouillon.)