Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in the Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker - The Spice of Your Life (2024)

We used to cook these cabbage rolls on the stovetop, and it cooked for 2 ½ hours. Now we use our Ninja Foodi pressure cooker and cook time is about 40 minutes, including pressurizing and pressure release. That doesn't count making the rolls and the sauerkraut sauce, but it still saves a lot of time!

Bringing Stuffed Cabbage Rolls to the Appliance Age!

First things first: this is not a quick recipe! You'll need a few hours to put it together and have it on the table. So this is a good dish to make on a weekend. It makes a great Sunday dinner! But we've changed some of the cooking steps to speed the process up by taking advantage of modern appliances.

First, our original recipe called for boiling a head of cabbage for 10 minutes to soften the leaves... plus the time to bring a large of water to a boil. Now, we wrap the cabbage in plastic wrap and cook it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes. So that saves 4 minutes, plus the time to boil the water. Not a huge savings, but every minute counts. And it's easier because you don't have to drain the cabbage, so that's anouther couple of minutes! You do have to be careful when taking the cabbage out of the microwave. It will be hot, and give off some steam when you unwrap it.

Second: the original recipe required cooking the cabbage rolls and sauerkraut sauce on the stovetop for 2 ½ hours. Cooking it in a pressure cooker only took 40 minutes, including pressurizing and release time.

This is a Large Recipe!

We have an 8-quart Ninja Foodi, and this recipe filled the pot right up to the fill line! If you have a smaller pot, you may need to reduce the ingredient quantities, or cook the rolls in two batches. (And I know some of you have two cookers!)

Make It in Stages!

If you don't have enough time to make this in one day, split the work up. You can make the sauce in advance and store it in the refrigerator. Same with the cabbage rolls. So you could make the sauce Friday evening, make the cabbage rolls Saturday afternoon, and put everything in the pot and cook it Sunday evening.

Ingredients You'll Need

For the Cabbage Rolls

For the Sauerkraut Sauce

How to Make Pressure Cooker Cabbage Rolls

Make the Cabbage Rolls

These are the ingredients for the meat mixture: ground beef, ground pork, ground lamb, tomato sauce, tomato paste, paprika, allspice, and rice.

Mix everything together and set aside at room temperature.

Wrap the cabbage in plastic wrap. (Our grocery store has thin plastic bags in the produce section. We put the cabbage in a bag at the store, and put it in the microwave in the store bag!) Cook the cabbage on high for 6 minutes.

Carefully unwrap the cabbage and remove the large leaves. If you need more soft leaves to wrap all the meat, cook the cabbage for another 4 minutes. Repeat until you've wrapped all the meat.

The size of the rolls is a personal preference. In some areas of Europe where these are popular, the rolls are very small. In other regions, they can be pretty large. We went to a Polish restaurant here in Denver once and I ordered the cabbage rolls. They brought out two huge rolls that filled an entire plate!

To fill the rolls, lay a cabbage leaf flat on your cutting board.

Take 1 to 2 tablespoons of the meat filling and roll it into a cylinder. Put it onto the bottom end of the cabbage leaf. This is 2 tablespoons of filling. Note that as you use more of the cabbage the leaves will get smaller, so you'll need to use less filling. (If you want all the rolls to be the same size you'll need to use more cabbages, and use the remaining cabbage for another dish.)

Roll the leaf to just cover the filling.

Fold the sides of the leaf in.

Roll the leaf to close the roll. Repeat until you've used all the meat filling. Slice up any remaining cabbage that was too small for wrapping.

Make Ahead: You can store the cabbage rolls in the refrigerator overnight.

Make the Sauerkraut Sauce

Here are the sauce ingredients: bacon, onion, garlic, sauerkraut, salt, white pepper, red pepper flakes, brown sugar, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, chicken broth, and tomato paste

Cook the bacon until it's a bit crispy.

Add the onions and cook for for 3 to 4 minutes, then add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Add the rest of the sauce ingredients and mix well. Cook for 5 minutes.

Make Ahead: You can store the sauce in the refrigerator for a day or two.

Assemble and Cook the Cabbage Rolls

Put the cabbage that you sliced up in the bottom of the Foodi pot. (We didn't have much left over!)

Spread a third of the sauce into the pot.

Put in a layer of cabbage rolls.

Layer in another third of the sauce.

Add another layer of cabbage rolls. You can see that some of them are a lot smaller.

Finish with the remaining sauce. Add water to just come up to the top of the sauce. This recipe filled our 8-quart pot right up to the fill line!

Pressure cook for 20 minutes. When the timer goes off let the pot release naturally for 10 minutes, then manually release.

This is a complete meal, but I like to serve it with some rustic bread to soak up that sauce!

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