baked cabbage recipe

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baked cabbage recipe

This baked cabbage recipe is absolutely one of my current favorites! Truly, I feel like I could eat it every day and never get tired of it. Of course it's always delicious fresh from the oven, but it's so dang tasty that I also have no problem snacking on it cold and straight from the fridge. Soft, baked cabbage slices generously smothered in an array of antioxidant-dense spices are an absolute delight for the taste buds (and the body!).

The spice mixture is intentionally made "in bulk" so that it's already prepared and handy whenever you get a hankering for some flavorful baked cabbage. I simply store it in an old spice bottle with a shaker top for ease in sprinkling.

Spice Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons organic garlic powder

• 2 teaspoons organic onion powder

• 2 teaspoons organic cumin powder

• 1 teaspoon organic smoked paprika

• 1 teaspoon organic chili powder

Additional Ingredients

• 1 organic cabbage (sliced)

• organic olive oil

• sea salt (optional)

• organic powdered mustard

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F

2. Add all of the spice ingredients to a small shaker container.

3. Slice the cabbage and lay the slices on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush each slice very lightly with olive oil, sprinkle lightly with sea salt (optional) and powdered mustard, and then coat with the spices mix (as heavily or lightly as you want). Flip the slices and repeat the process on the other side.

4. Bake for about 1 hour or until soft, flipping halfway through.

additional notes

Debating between a purple or a green cabbage? Go for the purple. The darker the color, the more health benefits it offers.

Why the ground mustard?

Without getting overly technical here, adding powdered mustard seeds to cooked cruciferous veggies increases the formation of a little something important called: sulforaphane.

With a name like that, all it brings to my mind is the trademark stench of sulfur. But unlike that rotten egg smell, we definitely want more sulforaphane in our lives! Found in cruciferous vegetables, it seems to be the substance that we can thank for many of the awesome health benefits those cruciferous veggies provide, such as helping to protect our brains and as a potential anti-cancer food.

If you were to bite into a raw piece of, say, broccoli, this biting action would stimulate the release of an enzyme that (through some process I won't even pretend to understand) creates sulforaphane. The problem arises, however, if (like me) you prefer your veggies cooked. Why is this an issue? Because this bite-sensitive enzyme is heat-sensitive and destroyed in the cooking process. Thankfully, there's a workaround: ground mustard seeds. Adding the powdered seed to cooked cruciferous vegetables (even just a dash, sprinkled on before eating) somehow also stimulates the sulforaphane production and you get to reap the benefits, even sans enzyme.

No worries if you have no mustard on hand, though. Simply chop your cruciferous veggies 40 minutes prior to cooking (this replaces the act of biting) so that the sulforaphane is created before the veggies hit the heat, when the enzyme is still intact.

Interested in knowing more? I'd highly recommend Dr. Michael Greger's book: How Not to Die. (This specific sulforaphane info can be found on pages 304-307.) This impressive tome is jammed full of documented studies and facts, and is an absolute treasure trove of info for those interested in knowing more about the science behind plant-based living.

If you make some of these tasty cabbage slices, let me know how much you (hopefully) love them in the comments below. Happy eating :)

Much love,

Melinda