Cabbage Fritters – Easy Step-by-Step Recipe with Photos
Cabbage fritters fried in vegetable oil make a delicious breakfast. The cooking is easy, even simple, and takes very little time, and you end up with wonderful cabbage fritters for a good start to the day. Ordinary white cabbage is in every fridge, or you can buy it at any time of year. Either way, a tasty and wholesome breakfast is guaranteed.
It is hard to say whether cabbage fritters count as a vegetarian dish, since they contain eggs. And, to be honest, cabbage patties are at their very best with fresh sour cream. But, as it turns out, even the classic satirists Ilf and Petrov cheated a little with their “mock hare”. It is not a vegetarian dish at all – it is made from pork with bread and other additions. So call them whatever you like; the wonderful taste of the dish will not change.
By and large, these fritters are the closest relative of deruny, the potato pancakes. Everything is done almost the same way, though there are some rather important details. Homemade zucchini fritters, which we always cook in summer, or autumn pumpkin fritters follow a very similar method, and there is nothing difficult about it. What matters is that all the ingredients are easy to find and the cooking does not take long.
Familiar white cabbage is one of the staple vegetables that have been grown since ancient times. Cabbage contains plenty of the vitamins and minerals the body needs. Fresh cabbage is rich in coarse fibre, which is good for digestion. Notably, cabbage does not need to be cooked, and cabbage fritters, fried only briefly, keep everything that is good in it.
Young cabbage is a special kind of cabbage. I must admit that as a little boy I thought young cabbage and “old” cabbage were different vegetables. In ancient times young cabbage was considered a delicacy and was served at festive tables. Its firm, crunchy leaves are just right for making a cabbage salad and cabbage fritters.
To make cabbage fritters for a breakfast for two, half a small head of young cabbage is enough. That said, “old” cabbage works perfectly well too. The important thing is that the cabbage is not limp or dried out. Besides the cabbage, you will need eggs and flour, seasoning and vegetable oil. And just half an hour of your time.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Young cabbage 0.5 head
- Eggs 2
- Wheat flour 1-2 tbsp
- Vegetable oil 3-4 tbsp
- Salt, black pepper to taste
- Fresh sour cream, herbs for serving
Step-by-step recipe
- The best fritters come from young cabbage – it is more tender and juicy. Still, outside the season for young vegetables any cabbage will do – white, red or savoy. If the outer leaves are damaged or dried out, it is better to remove them. By the way, taking the leaves off a cabbage to make delicious cabbage rolls could not be simpler – it is easily done under running water.
- Cut the head of cabbage in half. If you are making the cabbage fritters for two, one half can be wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge. You can use it to make wonderfully tasty braised cabbage. Shred the other half, or better, slice it and then chop it further with a knife so that no large pieces of cabbage remain. Cabbage cut this way will be practically dry. Do not process the cabbage in a blender or a meat grinder – it will give off a lot of liquid.
- Salt the chopped cabbage and season it with black pepper. Gently and lightly squeeze the cabbage with your hands and let it stand for 2-3 mins so the salt dissolves. Crack the eggs into the cabbage and mix with a fork. Thanks to the egg white, the eggs hold the fritters together beautifully during frying.
- Add 1 tbsp of wheat flour (a heaped one) to the cabbage and mix thoroughly. Do your best to get rid of any lumps of batter and flour completely. But, as experience shows, with so little flour there will be no lumps.
- You may need a little more flour. But in the end the mixture for the cabbage fritters should have the consistency of a napa cabbage salad.
- Heat 3-4 tbsp of vegetable oil in a large frying pan. Any oil will do – olive or sunflower, it does not matter much. The oil should get very hot, until a barely visible wisp of white smoke appears. Unrefined oil contains many natural extras and has a noticeable smell of its own, which disappears once the oil is heated to a high temperature.
- Using an ordinary tablespoon, drop the cabbage mixture into the hot oil. One spoonful of the mixture makes one cabbage fritter. The cabbage patties come out the size of potato deruny, and just as “shaggy” because of the rather coarse bits of cabbage. There is a certain charm in that. The cabbage mixture does not spread at all in the hot oil, so press the fritters down a little once they are in the pan to make them slightly thinner.
- Fry the fritters over a heat slightly below medium, without covering the pan with a lid. Depending on their thickness, frying can take up to 5 mins on each side. As soon as the underside has browned, turn the fritters over with a fork and fry the other side. The fritters must cook through and be completely done. There is no need to fry them further under a lid – they will go soggy.
- The finished cabbage fritters should be golden brown with a thin, crispy crust. A large frying pan holds 10-12 fritters at a time. Since the fritters are small, that is roughly one serving. There is no need to add more oil for the next batch – cabbage does not soak up oil at all, unlike fried eggplant and fried zucchini.
- Put the fritters on plates while they are still hot and, I recommend, season them with black pepper, grinding it right before use. Garnish the dish with a sprig of fresh herbs, preferably mint or basil – they will give the fritters a flavour note all of their own.
- Be sure to serve fresh sour cream in a small sauce boat, to pour over the cabbage fritters just before eating. Serve the breakfast hot only, and eat it right away.
| Yield: | 2 servings |
| Calories: | 131 |
| Prep: | 10 mins |
| Cook: | 20 mins |
| Total: | 30 mins |
| Category: | Pancakes |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.5
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