Quick-Pickled Red Cabbage Recipe

Per your taste preference, you can more or less of anything. <3

Time is precious, so know that I’ll always have the cooking guidance at the top of the page and it’ll always look like a process skeleton you can follow and season to taste.

I’m the sort of soul that reverse engineers flavors; cooks based off smell, taste, and testing; and am new to measuring out each potion to its proper metric. (You may want more or less salt/vinegar/spice/etc than the next soul and you may want more or less instruction: I’m always here if you have questions beyond the post. )

As a perpetual over-thinker, I volleyed hard on what would be the first recipe I would post. There’s a cornucopia of roasted root vegetables, vegetarian sausages, braised bok choy, acorn squash bisque, a decadent dairy-free chocolate custard, and a slew of staples all in the hopper, but the omnipresent favorite/healthiest/zero-waste side would be this simple Quick-Pickled Red Cabbage. It accompanies almost every meal and our fridge is rarely without it.

Cabbage is the kind of food I would have balked at several years ago, and it has become one of my most beloved. It is incredibly good for you: “There are 20 different flavonoids and 15 different phenols in cabbage, all of which have demonstrated antioxidant activity. (These anthocyanins qualify not only as antioxidant nutrients, but as anti-inflammatory nutrients as well.)”

Throw in the added health benefits of raw garlic and apple cider vinegar, and you have yourself a prebiotic wallop that is bursting with minerals and vitamins, promotes gut health, and pops your plate with color.

This cabbage is fantastic on its own right, but it’ll brighten up tacos, stir-fry dishes, vegetarian sausages, salads, eggs, miso, just about everything.

I grate garlic because it helps spread flavor and thus allows me to use up less garlic. One clove of grated garlic easily packs the flavor of 2-3 chopped.

Cut out the core from each half of cabbage and chop finely so they incorporate well with the leaves.
That knife is the same flinty Kitchen Aid my mother gave me back in college, but it can still cut through cruciferous cores with ease.
Always have a compost bowl at the ready to dispose any scraps in an outside bin.