🥄 What Is Lahanorizo?
A traditional Greek one-pot dish combining tender cabbage, rice, and a mellow tomato broth, seasoned with olive oil, onion, leek, garlic, dill, lemon, and optional feta. Think of it as a cozy cross between a stew and risotto—comfort food with Mediterranean health perks.
🌱 Health & Flavor Highlights
Cabbage brings antioxidants, vitamin C, and anti-inflammatory goodness
Cooked in heart-healthy olive oil and packed with veggies, it’s nutrient-dense and veggie-rich.
🍴Ingredients and Cooking Steps:
-¼ cup olive oil
-1 medium onion diced (about 1 cup or 4 oz or 115 grams)
-½ of a small cabbage (about 10 oz or 300 grams sliced (not too thin)
-½ tablespoon tomato paste
-salt/pepper
-About ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
-½ cup medium grain rice (uncooked)
-Lemon and parsley for serving
-Heat olive oil in a medium pot
–Add the onion and sauté until soft about 5-7 minutes
Add the cabbage and mix until cabbage is coated with the olive oil. Heat for 2-3 minutes (stirring) until cabbage has wilted somewhat.
-Add about 1 cup hot water hot water and simmer for 20-30 minutes with pot covered until cabbage is soft. Add more water if needed.
-Once cabbage is soft add the tomato paste that has been dissolved in 2-3 tablespoons of water, and ½ teaspoon salt, freshly ground pepper and cayenne pepper and mix.
-Add ½ cup (uncooked) medium grain rice, stir so that rice is coated with the oil.
-Add 1 ¼ cup hot water and simmer (pot covered) until rice is almost cooked (about 15 minutes). Add more hot water in small amount if needed. -Once rice is ready, but there is still a bit of water left in the pot, remove from heat and keep covered until rest of water is absorbed. Rice should be creamy.
Serve with plenty of lemon and sprinkle with parsley.
You may serve with some feta.
[Music] So with a cabbage, you just want to kind of cut down until you start to see the core. At that point, it gets a little tough, but everything above it is really nice and tender once you sauté it. What I love about cabbage has really good sweetness, incredibly healthy, incredibly versatile. You can eat it raw, cooked, anywhere in between. And on top of it, very affordable. So, it’s a great thing to always have around and it really doesn’t go bad for weeks at a time. Like, I can keep a cabbage in my fridge for 3 4 weeks and only then does it even show signs of aging. So, as long as you keep it refrigerated, it actually is super shelf stable. Um, which is nice. A lot of people think like lettuce goes bad quickly, so cabbage would also, but you know, cabbage is a hell of a lot sturdier than lettuce, even though they look similar. As you can see, we have some nicely chopped cabbage. We wanted to keep decent sized chunks so that once it starts to heat, it doesn’t completely wilt away. That’s where you get some texture is uh the cabbage because obviously the rice and onions are going to get crazy soft. You want to have a little bit of crunch in the cabbage while still cooking it through and making sure the sweetness comes out. So, I am going to sauté this so that we start to get some bend. But as soon as I can see that we’ve got the cooking process started, that’s probably when the water and the rice comes in. um to make sure we got the textures right. So, we really like when we start to see some brown bits, especially on onions, but also the cabbage, because that means we’re getting some caramelization, which means savory flavor and also some sweetness. And once you start to see that things are browning, you obviously want to uh stir a little bit more frequently so that we don’t burn anything. rice is going in. And in most cases when you use rice in recipes, you usually want to actually drain it. But the reason most people drain it is to get some of the excess starch off. um tends to be a tad healthier. With that being said, we like really have a ton of healthy stuff in this dish. There’s really not a whole lot of calories, so it’s not the issue here. But what the starch does do in a rice dish like this is it makes it extra creamy. So, if you rinse off the rice, it won’t be as creamy. If you don’t rinse it off, you know, you have that extra creaminess factor. So, we’re just kind of folding it in to all this really, really tasty cabbage. And we got a lot of liquid. Another tip is when you have some tomato paste, you can obviously like use it as like a cup, so you get a little extra flavor there. And I think now that it’s all covered, we’re going to put some parsley, dried parsley in here. I think that’s always good. and uh extra flavor, which is great. A little extra nutrition as well. So, we’ll mix all that in. And I think it says just cook for about 15 minutes and check on it in 15. Uh this looks phenomenal. Um we got even some crispy bits on the bottom that will kind of come up as we mix. And there’s some really good flavor down there. And yeah, I think the rice is cooked well, but not like overdone. And I think we got a good combination of soft cabbage, but still some texture. So excited to dive in and see how we did. So, here we go. Cabbage and rice. Take one. I think I’m a huge fan. Um, it’s simple, but it’s also complex. and the fact that, you know, a little lemon juice, a little feta cheese, little seasoning. I’m going to give this give it an 8.7. So good. It’s super creamy. The texture is great. Um, really no complaints. I’m going to give it a 9.2. So, I’m happy with how it looks. Um, I think we cooked everything to the right temp. It’s a very basic recipe. It’s one of those take one bite you’re like that’s good. Then as you take more bites you’re like wait it’s actually really good. So I’ll give it 7.8. Really tasty. Super easy to make. I could eat this once a week but we’ve done better. But for the ease of recipe and how healthy it is happy with it. Could definitely be a monthly staple.