Italian Cabbage Dumplings
You know, well, everybody knows that cabbage is good for you.
Right. But that taste…
I wanted to include some green cabbage in my diet and tried to think of how can I make this enjoyable and not a dread.
I thought: Chinese have been using green cabbage since forever and they make delicious stuff out of them!
Since I am not Chinese and I wouldn’t dare mess around with such a complex, rich, and ancient culinary art, I decided to give Chinese cabbage rolls an Italian spin so nobody gets offended. Though if you are Chinese and want to teach me how to make high-protein healthy cabbage rolls, please write me 🙂
So, what makes this dish “Italian”?
Besides the usual aromatics (onion, carrots, leek) I used red wine and fennel seeds. Fennel seeds really give a twist to this dish!
This has only 19g of carbs per serving which makes it ideal for someone on a LCHF diet or keto (when carbs are kept below 50g).
It’s also fairly high-protein. But if you want to increase the amount of protein without increasing calories, go for lean beef (here I used a fatty cut).
This dish can easily be boosted in protein to have 30-40g per serving just by using lean beef.
This dish has less than 500kcal per serving so it can be used for cutting as well (use lean beef in this case which will also increase the amount of protein per serving!)
If I had a broiler, I would have put some Parmesan cheese on top and gave them a couple of mins to become crunchy and even more delicious!
Gif Recipe

Servings |
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- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 onion red, chopped
- 1 carrot chopped
- 1 leek sliced
- 250 g minced meat beef and pork or either
- 1/4 cup wine red
- 1 tbsp fennel seeds
- green cabbage boiled/steamed
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
Ingredients
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Nutrition Facts
Italian Cabbage Dumplings
Amount Per Serving
Calories 450
Calories from Fat 234
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 26g
40%
Saturated Fat 8.6g
43%
Total Carbohydrates 19g
6%
Dietary Fiber 5g
20%
Sugars 7g
Protein 28g
56%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
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- Warm olive oil in a pan
- Add onion, carrot, leek and stir until wilted
- Add meat and brown it
- Add red wine and let evaporate
- Add salt, pepper, and fennel seeds
- Steam/boil the green cabbage and remove the hard core (each leave should look like a butterfly at the end)
- Add meat mix to each leave and make dumplings
- Serve and enjoy!
To increase protein: use lean ground beef.