Skillet Stuffed Cabbage

I found this recipe in the September issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine in a section on "5 Ingredient Dinners". I made it a few weeks ago, and true to the magazine's word, it was extraordinarily simple, made completely on the stove top, and turned out far better than I expected. The twist in this dish is the addition of mint leaves to the meat mixture. I'm not big on mint but I really like stuffed cabbage, so this dish sounded intriguing to me, especially since the prep is far quicker and easier than the traditional stuffing of the cabbage, with the boiling and the rolling and the baking and all of dat... ok, ok, enough of my Schwarzenegger impression... On to the recipe.

Skillet Stuffed Cabbage
Ingredients:
1 28 ounces can of diced tomatoes
1 1/4 pounds of lean (90%) ground beef
1 8.8 ounce bag of heat and serve precooked rice pilaf (don't heat it!)
1 cup of loosely packed, coarsely chopped fresh mint leaves
1 small head of green cabbage (about 2 pounds), cored

For the rice,I used the Long Grain & Wild Rice package, but I'm sure the some of the others would work well, too, like the Original Long Grain, the Rice Pilaf, or the Whole Grain Brown.

Directions:
1. Transfer 1 cup of the canned tomatoes with some of the juice to a medium bowl. Pour the remaining tomatoes and juice into a nonstick 12-inch skillet.
2. To the tomatoes in the bowl, add the beef, rice, mint, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Mix to blend.
3. Remove 8 large cabbage leaves from the head. Spoon 1/2 cup of the meat mixture into the center of each leaf. Arrange the filled leaves, open side up, in a skillet over the tomatoes. Cover skillet and cook the mixture over medium-high heat for 20 minutes or until the beef loses its pink color.
4. To serve, place 2 of the stuffed cabbage leaves on each of the dinner plates. Spoon the tomato sauce over the cabbage.

The photo at the top is the pot-full just before the cooking began. I was so eager to eat this up when it was done, that I forgot to shoot the finished product. There is a good photo from the magazine here,though (there's nutritional info on the dish there, too). The mint infused into the beef mixture nicely and wasn't overpowering at all. I will definitely be making this again, but I'll have to fix something extra to feed my son, since, unlike most things we cook, he didn't care for it very much.

Enjoy,
Lorence