How do I cook cabbage so it does not taste of school dinners?
The sulphur compounds released by long cooking, the short methods that avoid them, and how each type of cabbage behaves.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 15 min
- Read
- 3 min
Short answer
Cook it fast. Cabbage releases sulphur compounds the longer it is heated, so five to seven minutes of shredded cabbage in a hot pan or a covered pan with a splash of water gives something sweet, while twenty minutes of boiling gives the smell everyone remembers.
Cabbage has a bad reputation earned entirely by overcooking. The sulphur compounds that produce the institutional smell build up steadily with cooking time, so the fix is almost purely about speed.
Step by step
- Shred it finely.Quarter it, cut out the hard core, and slice across into ribbons. Fine shreds cook in minutes; wedges take three times as long and that time is the problem.
- Choose a fast method.Stir-frying, quick steaming, or braising with a lid and very little liquid. All are done in five to eight minutes.
- Use a wide pan and high heat.Butter or oil, then the cabbage, then a splash of water and the lid on for two to three minutes. Lid off to drive off the moisture and let it colour a little.
- Stop while it still has bite.Tender but with some resistance. When cabbage goes fully soft it has already gone past the point where it tastes good.
- Season with more than salt.Cabbage takes fat, acid and spice extremely well — butter, caraway, mustard seed, cider vinegar, bacon, black pepper. Plain boiled cabbage is not a fair test of cabbage.
- Treat red cabbage differently.It is denser and does suit long cooking, but it needs acid — vinegar or apple — to stay red rather than turning blue-grey, and 45 to 60 minutes braised.
- Treat savoy and hispi as the fast ones.Savoy is loose-leaved and cooks in minutes. Hispi, sometimes sold as sweetheart or pointed cabbage, is sweet and excellent quartered and roasted or griddled hard.
- Try roasting wedges.Hispi or savoy wedges, oiled, salted, 220°C for 20 minutes until the edges char. Dry heat avoids the sulphur problem entirely and tastes nothing like boiled cabbage.
Tips
- The smell is a function of time. Nothing else about the method matters nearly as much.
- Roasted or griddled cabbage is a different vegetable to boiled cabbage.
- Red cabbage needs acid or it turns an unappetising blue-grey.
Common mistakes
- Boiling cabbage in a large pan of water for fifteen minutes — It releases sulphur compounds throughout, leaches the flavour into the water and destroys the texture. Everything unpleasant about cabbage comes from this one habit.
- Cooking cabbage in wedges when you wanted it quick — A wedge takes far longer to cook through than shreds, so by the time the middle is tender the outside has been heated long enough to go sulphurous.
If it doesn't work
Strong sulphurous smell
Cause: Cooked too long — Fix: Cut the time. Shredded cabbage needs five to seven minutes, not twenty.
Watery and pale
Cause: Boiled, or lid left on too long — Fix: Take the lid off to let moisture evaporate and let it colour in the pan.
Red cabbage went blue
Cause: No acid — Fix: Add vinegar, apple or lemon at the start — the colour comes back.
Tough and chewy
Cause: Core left in, or sliced too thick — Fix: Cut the core out and shred more finely.
Questions people ask
Why does cabbage smell so bad when cooked?
It contains sulphur compounds that break down into hydrogen sulphide and related molecules with heat. The amount released rises sharply after about five to seven minutes of cooking, which is why fast methods smell of almost nothing.
Can I cook cabbage ahead?
It is much better fresh. If you must, undercook it, cool it fast and reheat quickly in a hot pan — reheating gently for a long time reintroduces the same problem.