Last night's dinner: Cabbage Soup

Ok I know what you are thinking, and yeah I do make alot of soup! :) It is just so easy and since it is getting cold here (32 degree right now at 7:55am) it's a good pick me up. I must have done a good job with the soup last night because there was no left overs! Even my 6 year old daughter liked it and she hates cabbage! I am proud to say that this is my own recipe. I researched different caggage recipes to see what mixes well with it and went to my refridgerator to see what I had that would go well with it and came up with this:

CABBAGE SOUP

1/4 head of cabbage, coarsly chopped
2 peeled and chopped carrots
2 chopped stalks of celery
1 chopped medium onion
1 tbsp garlic
5 boullion cubes
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp all spice
1 tbsp parsley
8 cups water
1-2 tbsp bacon grease or butter
salt and pepper
1 cup basmati rice

Melt bacon grease or butter in the bottom of your stock pot or dutch oven over a medium heat. Toss in onion, celery, garlic, and a pinch of salt (a pinch is 3 fingers) and let those soften. The salt will help pull moisture out of the onions and celery. While these are cooking you can prepare your carrots and cabbage. Once the onions and celery are soft pour in about a cup (maybe a bit more) of the water and get any of the stuff stuck to the bottom. Then you add all remaining ingredients except for the rice, when the mixture comes to a boil add the rice. Let this lightly boil for 20 min, then remove from heat. Let soup sit for 5 minutes before serving.

NOTES:
You can use any boullion you wish, I used chicken. Instead of boullion you can also use 2 qts (8 cups) of stock or broth.

Have fun with the veggies that go into this, I was going to add zucchini but it went bad on me.

If you don't have bacon grease you can always make some! Just fry the bacon in the pan you will be using and you can crumble the bacon in the soup when it's done!

I used basmati rice but you can use any rice you have around. If you don't feel comfortable cooking it in the soup then omit the same amount of water that you would use to cook the rice from the soup. In the case of the basmati rice you would omit 2 cups. You can cook the rice seperatly and add to the soup when you serve it. A nice scoop on top would look neat, like ice cream.

MY RATING: 4 cabbages out of 5