I don’t know about you guys, but I can get kind of lazy when it comes to the meals I chose to make. I don’t mind being it he kitchen for longer periods of time, but I’m not a huge fan of recipes that involve lots of steps, especially ones that involve wrapping one element in another. If I’ve got all the time in the world and the kid’s not running all around me while I’m cooking, I’ve got no problem, but when does that ever happen. So, when I first thought about making Smitten Kitchen’s Italian Stuffed Cabbage, I wasn’t sure about tackling it. But I decided to give it a shot and it actually wasn’t much more work than making meatballs.

The first thing I did for this recipe was getting the bread soaking in milk. My bread was pretty hard, so I figured it would make sense to get those pieces nice and soft. Meanwhile, I got my cabbage ready, cutting off the bottom and doing my best to keep the large pieces intact without ripping. With that ready, I got some water on the stove and made the meatballs. As usual, I went with the loose sweet Italian sausage from my grocery store, though I think I’m going to try and make my own next time. Anyway, with the meatballs prepared and the water boiling, I followed the recipe and got the cabbage ready.

From there, it was simply a matter of wrapping the meatball in cabbage and pinning everything together with a toothpick. Once that was done, I got the tomatoes cooking in the same pot I used to wilt the cabbage (after draining, of course) and dropped my meat filled packages in there. After cooking for a while, you take the picks out, flip them over and let cook a little longer.

In addition to being a really tasty recipe — my wife and I both really liked the flavor of these particular meatballs and how they interacted with the cabbage — this is a nice recipe because you can do the steps at various points throughout the day. Deb at Smitten breaks everything down that way and it really lends itself to someone like me who can be busy on and off throughout the day. I happened to be able to do everything in one session, but if I didn’t have that kind of time, I could have easily popped into the kitchen and made the meatballs, then put them in the fridge, done more work and come back later on. I highly recommend giving this recipe a try because I really haven’t tasted such an interesting meatball. This one will definitely be making its way into my regular rotation…if such a thing every takes shape.