Charred Cabbage Caesar, Your New Favorite Way to Caesar

Once you make a Caesar Salad with charred, pan-roasted cabbage, you'll never go back to boring ol' Romaine lettuce again. Shall we?

Ingredients You Need for Roasted Cabbage with Gochujang Glaze

You wouldn't think it, but cabbage is fairly flavorful on its own, so you only need a few ingredients to enhance their flavor. You will need:

• Cabbage, 1 head, outer bruised or wilted leaves removed, then cut into 2-inch wide wedges
• Avocado oil, about 2 tablespoons

for the Gochujang Glaze:

• Gochujang, 2 tablespoons
• Garlic, 2 cloves, finely minced
• Soy sauce/tamari, 1 tablespoon
• Apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon
• Maple syrup, 1 tablespoon
• Sesame oil, 1 teaspoon

What Kind of Cabbage Should I Use to Roast?

Green cabbage, with the green, smooth leaves, is the one I use in this recipe.

However, any type of cabbage, ruffly savoy, purple, even napa, works for this recipe. The nutritional profiles across the types are generally fairly similar. Some varieties are milder in flavor than others, but in this recipe, the differences are not noticeable because of the flavors of the other ingredients, namely the Anchovy Vinaigrette.

How Many Pounds is a Head of Cabbage?

Because cabbages come in different types, sizes, and density (how tightly packed the leaves are), it's better to "measure" cabbage by actual pounds, not by number of heads.

According to the USDA, an "average" cabbage weighs between 2 and 3 pounds, but what is this? The 1800s? Have you seen cabbages in grocery stores? They have gotten MUCH bigger, and the average green cabbage based on my own experience weighs more like 4 pounds. Don't stress about having an extra pound of cabbage, it sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

Avocado Oil. I use this Avocado Oil as my every day neutral-flavored cooking oil. The oil comes in this spray bottle format, which makes even coating for roasting super easy.

Olive Oil.

Anchovies.

Garlic and all other herbs and produce I get from the Santa Monica Farmers Market on Wednesdays or Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sundays.

Instructions How to Make Roasted Charred Cabbage Caesar

This method for roasting cabbage is easy! If you haven't already, remove any bruised or wilted outer leaves, and slice off the dried end of the core. Cut the cabbage in half lengthwise through the core, then cut each half into 4 wedges that are about 2 inches on the wider side.

Pan-sear and roast cabbage first first:

1. On the stovetop, heat a cast iron skillet or heavy bottom, oven-safe pan over high heat.
2. Add about 2 tablespoons avocado or other high-heat cooking oil and let heat until it starts to shimmer.
3. Carefully place cabbage wedges, a cut side down, in the pan. Cook cabbage until well charred, about 5 minutes. Turn cabbages over, and char the second side for an additional 5 minutes.
4. Continue roasting the cabbage until the second side is charred and the interior is tender, about 15 minutes.

While the cabbage is roasting in the oven, make the Gochujang Glaze.:

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the 2 tablespoons gochujang, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar, and minced garlic cloves.
2. Remove skillet from oven-make sure to use oven mitts! Brush Gochujang Glaze over cabbage.
3. Return skillet to oven and roast for 5 minutes to caramelize the Gochujang Glaze.
4. Remove Roasted Cabbage wedges to serving plate. Garnish with sliced scallions and toasted sesame seeds.

Is Roasted Cabbage Healthy?

Depending on your health needs and dietary considerations, Roasted Charred Cabbage Caesar is healthy! To be honest, I can't really think of a case in which Roasted Charred Cabbage Caesar would not be healthy, unless maybe the high fiber content of the cabbage causes other gastric issue for you.

Let's break down some of the nutritional highlights, starting with the most underrated nutrition hero, cabbage. Cabbage is a non-starchy vegetable that not only add subtle, natural sweetness to a dish, but is especially good for the body in the fall and winter months when other colorful vegetables seem to be in shorter supply. Cabbage provides a number of nutritional benefits like:

• fiber, which contributes to good gut health, decreases cholesterol, and lowers blood sugar
• surprisingly, vitamin C
• additional antioxidants, primarily in the form of anthocyanins in purple/red cabbage
• glucosinolates and suforaphane with have strong anti-cancer and liver detox properties

_{(source: USDA)}

Dietary Considerations of Roasted Charred Cabbage Caesar

This Roasted Cabbage Caesar recipe as presented is:

• pescatarian (anchovy in the vinaigrette)
• gluten-free
• refined sugar-free

Pro Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

Double, triple, or even quadruple the Anchovy Vinaigrette. The amount of ingredients for the Anchovy Vinaigrette make about ⅔ cup, which fits this specific recipe. But I highly recommend scaling up to make triple the amount to save and use for other salads and grain bowls. Use the amount you need for the cabbage, then store the rest in an airtight glass jar in the refrigerator.

Variety of cabbages make it fun. If you want to add some more color to your table, use different cabbages. Different colored cabbages do taste different from one another, but the difference is so subtle, you'd probably only be able to tell the difference if you tasted them totally raw side-by-side, and that's if you had a pretty sensitive palate. The different colors also have different antioxidant profiles, since different antioxidants render different pigment colors in vegetables!

Make double the amount of Cabbage. Cabbage are a sturdy, reliable vegetable, which means they hold up really well in the refrigerator for a few days as leftovers or even as Meal Prep.

Best Cabbage Salad Recipes

Once you start making salads with cabbage, you may never go back to boring ol' lettuce-based salads again! Here are the favorites:

Food for Afterthoughts

It wasn't until college that I tried Caesar salad for the first time. Rather, it wasn't until an inevitable order mixup during the daily lunch rush at Espresso Roma that I fell truly, madly deeply, head over heels in love with this lettuce that was nothing like the Iceberg to which I had been accustomed, drowning in what I thought was a Ranch dressing gone horribly, yet so wonderfully, rank.

In a valiant, albeit ignorant, attempt at battling a stubborn, unyielding Freshman 15, I dove into the Caesar Salad every time I sat down at one of Espresso Roma's wobbly tables made stable with a thrice-folded cover page yanked off a set of Black Lightning lecture notes. It never occurred to me that whatever little nutritional value in Romaine lettuce that wasn't negated by a deluge of Caesar dressing was completely eliminated by Roma's "crouton." A razor thin, bias-cut slice of bread was made impossibly crisp by possibly coating both sides with garlic butter, dredging it in Parmesan, then deep-frying it. I used the crouton as a plebeian utensil and scraped up every last fat-calorie left in Roma's wooden salad bowl like the collegiate pauper I was.

Surprisingly, my Freshman 15 didn't budge. It bulged even futher into The Sophomore 20. Maybe it was 25, but that's only because I stepped on the scale fully dressed, okay?

A twist of fate between the Cashier and the Pick-up Counter resulted in interest, developed into an innocent crush, then accelerated into superficial satisfaction of phyical needs mistaken for love. When I was enlightened into The Delicious Life, my simple, college-level relationship with Caesar Salad was inadequate. It wasn't enough to blindly accept a salad of unknown origin that varied in composition from restaurant. Who is Caesar? What makes it a Caesar salad when the composition varies widely across restaurants? Why does the dressing have a light fish fragrance? Where does the salad come from, since I often see it in both Italian and Mexican restaurants? I wanted to fully understand the Caesar Salad. I wanted to take it to the next level.

Perhaps there are some things that I don't ever need to know. Maybe it was a mistake to google Caesar Salad in an attempt to make it at home. I learned more than I ever needed or wanted to know about the history of Caesar Salad. It changed the way I felt. If ignorance is bliss, then knowing that Caesar Cardini invented the salad in Mexico and that it is supposed to be made tableside, with raw eggs, without anchovies, is misery.

My heart was broken.

Every time I saw Caesar Salad on a menu, two halves of my heart would go into conflict. If the restaurant prepared it the way it was "supposed to be," with raw eggs and Worcestershire sauce in the dressing, the foodish snob in me would be impressed. However, I would be reluctant to order it because raw eggs make me cringe. If the restaurant prepared it in any other way, I'd order it without thinking. I'd relish Romaine lettuce chopped with a knife, roasted garlic cloves tossed with the greens, creamy dressing thickened with anything but emulsified eggs, whole anchovies draped over top, and unnaturally perfect cubes of factory-seasoned bread that any other Semi Ho would call "stuffing."

Pseudo-Caesar salad tasted so much better to me, but it burdened me with guilt. The concept of "supposed to be" had fettered me to a smug little foodie prison.

Suffice it to say that at some point, I had to let the guilt go.

Whole anchovies never tasted so good.