Quick ‘n Easy Haluski

Ah, haluski. Comfort food from the heavens. For those of you that weren’t fortunate to grow up in an area with Eastern European immigrants, haluski is a dish of fried cabbage and potato dumplings. 

Sounds pretty easy, right? In theory, yes. It’s four, maybe five ingredients. But the grinding up of the potatoes for the dumplings is time consuming and seriously a pain in the ass. You grate up a few pounds of potatoes with the star-side of a four-sided grater.

So, in the interest in saving time (and the skin on your fingers), I’m going to share an awesome little trick with you. Instead of making the dumplings from scratch, use gnocchi. I’ve experimented with a few brands (both dried and frozen), and I’ve found that the kind you find in the pasta aisle of the grocery store works best. The frozen ones don’t cook up quite right. These are my favorites:

So, what you are going to do is cook these bad boys up according to the instructions. (Boil water, add gnocchi, cook ’til they float, about 2 minutes.) While you have the water on to boil, melt a stick or so of butter in a large frying pan. Using a small-ish head of cabbage, add 3/4 to a whole head sliced up. If you are anything like my Grandmom, there’s no such thing as too much cabbage. (If anyone but her made it, her comment would always be that it was good, but would be better if there was more cabbage.) Fry the cabbage in the butter until it’s not crunchy.

Once the gnocchi is cooked, add it to the cabbage and continue to fry them together for a few minutes. You might need to add a little more butter. This is comfort food, after all. Add salt to taste. Enjoy!