Smoked chorizo sausage and green cabbage go well together in this filling yummy dish!

I’m starting to become a fan of cooking with cabbage. Oh sure I like coleslaw, but no cooking is needed. I remember when I was young my dad would make sauerkraut. I hated the smell. Ugh! It just completely turned me off the stuff.

Well now that I’m eating LCHF, I’m much more open to foods I never let my lips touch – fish, cooked cabbage, liver (chicken, duck and beef), eggplant, mushrooms. I can’t believe what I’ve been missing out on.

Last summer I experimented with trying a new vegetable each week. Mostly I played with an assortment of mushrooms and some funky looking Asian veggies. Well it seems like cabbage is my new toy.

So I found an interesting cabbage recipe in Dana Carpender’s 200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes cookbook. Now I wasn’t looking for a cabbage recipe per se, but this one included chorizo sausage. Next to bacon, chorizo is fast becoming a favorite of mine.

The recipe is simple, but I played with it a little bit – more sausage; less cabbage, butter, garlic and coriander; adding liquid smoke for flavor; swapping sherry vinegar for the dry sherry. The next time I make it I’m going to make my own sausage. I found a great chorizo recipe in Beyond Bacon by Stacy Toth and Matthew McCarry that’s easy to make (I’m even toying with stuffing it in actual hog casings which my grocery store now offers).

The beauty of the chorizo and cabbage recipe is that you can experiment.Besides using my own sausage, next time I plan to add some veggies — sun dried tomatoes (homemade!), red onions or peppers. Mostly to add some color to the dish.

Carpender’s recipe is 6g of net carbs. That may seem high, but when you consider it is a single dish recipe, 6g is just fine. My changes ended up lowering the net carbs from 6g t0 4g. The original recipe makes 5 servings but I was only making enough for 2 (no leftovers).

I ended up using the micro cabbages my grocery store sells. These are slightly larger than a tennis ball. It was the perfect size for this dish. I only used half for this dish (the other half went into coleslaw).

Dot’s Chorizo & Cabbage
Net Carbs: 4g
Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 12 ounces chorizo sausage (2 sausage links per person)
• 3 tbsp butter, divided
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• ¼ head of green cabbage
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tsp liquid smoke

Directions

• Chop up the chorizo sausage into small bites.
• Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and toss in the sausage and liquid smoke. Stir to combine.
• Brown the sausage slightly. Add in the remaining butter along with the coriander, garlic and cabbage. Combine ingredients. Make sure the cabbage mixes well with the sausage. Coat the cabbage with the orange color of the sausage juices. Sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Stir in the sherry, cover the pan, lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes, remove the lid and either enjoy or cook for a few minutes to let some of the liquid evaporate.