9 Amazing Whole30 Cabbage Recipes To Make This Weekend (2024)

Cabbage is one of those vegetables that many people don’t seem to enjoy all that much. Quite often, it is because they weren’t exposed to many good cabbage recipes as a kid.

Alternatively, this leafy vegetable was often overcooked or oiled, making it lose virtually all pleasant flavor, and leaving an overly soggy and bitter veggie that they had to eat.

And that is a shame because these vegetables don’t just have plenty of different flavors to offer the dinner table, but also plenty of good vitamins and nutrients that are essential to healthy eating and living.

So, what better time to start gaining an appreciation for this little vegetable than for a healthy eating schedule, like a whole30 dieting plan?

A whole30 diet often asks you to cut out many of the unhealthier and sugar-rich foods that you may be eating too much of in your daily diet, leaving you needing to find new foods to try and eat more healthily with, at least for the 30-day duration.

To help you out with your whole30 plan, we have compiled a list of recipes that help show just how versatile of a cooking ingredient cabbage can be!

1. Easy One Pot Unstuffed Cabbage Roll

Starting this recipe list with a classic in almost any kitchen, we have a cabbage dish that many people will be familiar with.

Cabbage rolls are probably one of the most popular ways that cabbage is eaten at the dinner table.

Wrapping all kinds of meats, vegetables, and other flavors and fillings, is a great way of adding flavor to this leafy vegetable, even when it is over-boiled and left flavorless.

However, with this recipe, you’ll find that this isn’t just a great meal for a cabbage dish, but a great meal, period!

Pretty much all the ingredients that you’ll need for this recipe can be found very easily in any supermarket, from ground beef to onions, garlic, and cauliflower. So there’s no excuse to not try out this recipe for yourself!

While a traditional cabbage roll might normally use rice as a way to absorb flavor and help fill out a roll, rice is a no-go for a whole30 diet, so you’re going to need to get creative here.

Luckily, cauliflower rice does that job very nicely, while being full of healthy vitamins and flavor too!

2. Sausage & Cabbage Skillet

When people discuss different ways how to cook cabbage, by far the most common is boiling it. This is fine, but it also often leads to that nasty texture and bitter taste that many people often associate with this vegetable.

Fewer people will mention that braising your cabbage is their favorite and that’s a shame, especially when you’ve got some excellent ingredients to braise this veggie with!

This sausage and cabbage recipe is best prepared in a metal skillet, mixing a juicy and herb-packed sausage with some fresh coleslaw, probably the most popular cabbage dish.

With this, you get all that delicious protein from the sausage, as well as crunchy and veggies flavors that you’ll get from the slaw. Only now, thanks to the slaw, they’ll be even crispier!

3. Caramelized Cabbage With Bacon (Keto, Paleo, & Whole30 Compatible)

Cabbage very much lives in the same range of foods as sprouts.

Where, even if people don’t like them, then they have to admit that combining them with the right ingredients often makes them a lot more palatable, even to the most ardent of cabbage haters!

This recipe is a classic example of that principle, with the oils and fats from the bacon that this cabbage is cooked with helping to caramelize this recipe even better.

The resulting flavor combo is gorgeous, and can be added to pretty much any kind of main meal that you can think of as a topping, from hot dogs to burgers, or even into a kimchi or stir-fry dish!

Plus, not only is this recipe a whole30 compliant dish, but it’s also a great one to have handy for both keto and paleo diets too, making it perfect for those diets too, in case you think about changing your eating habits even more!

4. Whole30 Stuffed Cabbage

We’ve covered unstuffed cabbage in this guide, so now it’s time to cover a similar, yet slightly more familiar version of the recipe!

While the other recipe very much left the cabbage roll open and diced, making for a more blended style meal, this one sticks a little closer to the original, with the cabbage leaves serving as a way to wrap up your ingredients in an easy-to-hold (and store) roll.

Think of it like a vegetable fajita wrap, if that makes it more palatable!

Outside of that, we also love the use of the sauce being poured over the cabbage roll, making it almost like a lasagna, especially with the perfectly prepared and seasoned minced beef inside.

This is a great recipe for convenience, as it only uses a few main ingredients, and can be a great mainstay of your family recipes to come.

(It is also a pretty effective way of getting your kids to start liking cabbage, for a change!)

5. Buttery Cabbage

Sometimes, you want a cabbage recipe that surprises you on every metric, something that does something new and fresh with an old recipe.

Ad sometimes, you just want to keep things basic. So, to honor this simple yet effective vegetable, we have found the perfect recipe to help give plain old cabbage that little extra love!

This dish is already delicious on its own, but it’s made even better with a mashed side dish, whether that’s potato, squash, or even avocado. Try experimenting with different vegetables and toppings to see which one is best for you!

6. Quick & Easy Chicken Cabbage Stir Fry

Who doesn’t love a good stir fry recipe? They’re often very cheap to make, are a very healthy option for people when you pick the right cooking method and can be filled with all kinds of ingredients.

And wouldn’t you know it? Cabbage just so happens to be one of those ingredients!

What we particularly love about this recipe is that it is also a very quick recipe to make for yourself. With just 15 minutes on the clock, you’ll be able to make a phenomenal dish like this!

With a recipe full of so much protein and vitamins in there, it’s kind of surprising just how low-carb this meal is, with it only having 214 calories per serving. This will be right at home on your whole30 eating plan, that’s for sure.

Not only that, but this is a recipe that can go in a paleo diet, as well as being a gluten-free meal too. It’s practically tailor-made to be eaten as part of a balanced diet!

7. Best Braised Cabbage

We’ve already mentioned one or two recipes that include braising cabbage with other ingredients.

But if you want a recipe that just shows what cabbage can do when it is the star of the show, then you’re going to want to see what this recipe is all about!

Simply cook your wedges of cabbage with a little fat or oil, cover them so that they can cook, and you’ll be eating some of the best-braised cabbage that you’ve ever tasted!

8. Cabbage Beef Soup

Failing all else, you’ll find that some of the best recipes that use cabbage are stew or soup recipes.

Not only do they often have some great flavors and seasonings in them, but the issue of overboiling and cooking cabbages is less of an issue here.

After all, what’s the worst that can happen with a cabbage stew? Is the flavor going to leave the veggie and get into the stew? Oh no! How awful! Whatever will we do?

(They said sarcastically)

In any case, this is currently one of our favorite cabbage-based soups to make. The inclusion of beef adds a little extra protein into the mix, while also enhancing the flavor of the cabbage.

The cooking time might be a little long for some people. But if you’re looking for a healthy cabbage recipe that you know you’ll be reliably able to make, this is the perfect whole30 and paleo-compatible recipe to have in your arsenal!

9. Quick Kimchi

Kimchi is the national dish of South Korea, and is beloved around the world by millions of people, being both relatively easy to make, as well as benign packed with tons of heat to help warm the soul on a cold day.

Or should we say, warm the Seoul?

Terrible geography puns aside, this is a great example of recipes that just wouldn’t be the same without cabbage!

Final Thoughts

So, there you have it!

Cabbage is not just that one soggy vegetable that you just can’t stomach to eat on your plate. From coleslaw to kimchi, this little leafy veggie has so much to offer, that you’ll wonder why you didn’t start eating more of it sooner

At which point, you might actually realize why, and might start to get angry with your parents for feeding you such bad cabbage dishes.

Don’t blame them, though. It’s a tough veggie to get right. Especially without recipes like these!