With A Head Of Cabbage And Ham, Effortless Crock-Pot Dinner Is Underway

Culinarily speaking, ham and cabbage are best friends. As a hearty vegetable with thick, waxy leaves packed with fiber, potassium, and vitamin C, cabbage has plenty to offer. Meanwhile, ham is relatively inexpensive and often cured by smoking, salting, or brining, making it a less expensive way to build satiating meals brimming with flavor. Plus, one of the best tips for cooking ham is to go low and slow, while braising brings cabbage to life. That makes these two delicious, budget-friendly ingredients perfect for crafting cozy comfort meals in your Crock-Pot.

All you truly need for this meal is a decent-sized head of cabbage and a pound or so of ham. You can use pretty much any style of fully cooked ham you like, from flat ham steaks to spiral-cut ham roast. Remember that the style of ham you choose will be the main flavor of the finished dish, so pick something you'd enjoy eating by itself. After cubing both components into bite-sized pieces, it's a simple matter of stirring them together in the bottom of your Crock-Pot with a few cups of chicken broth and some good butter.

As everything braises together (about five hours on low is just about perfect), the ham releases savory flavor into the broth, while the cabbage becomes silky and tender, soaking up all that salty, briny, buttery liquid. The result is a very simple soup/stew that's homey, delicious, and a great way to feed a crowd affordably.

What makes a slow-cooker ham and cabbage meal so magical is that it tastes good whether you use the simplest ingredients or zhuzh things up with special seasonings and complex flavor profiles. For instance, if you don't have chicken broth, you can use water plus an extra pinch of salt and pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, or even a packet of dried gravy mix. The ham also adds flavor to the braising liquid for the cabbage to absorb. While this dish benefits from the extra fat butter provides (which makes it lush and silky), you can swap in olive oil, beef tallow, or lard.

It's also more than okay to slip in a few extra veggies, such as halved or quartered potatoes, diced onion, chopped carrots, sweet and earthy parsnips, or celery. Choose veggies that handle slow braising well, like cabbage, since you'll be lining the bottom of your Crock-Pot with them so they're nestled in the broth and get nice and tender.

As for seasonings, you can easily draw inspiration from cowboy-style skillet cabbage by adding a generous shake of hot smoked paprika, cumin, garlic cloves, and a splash of cider vinegar, or take things in a barbecue direction with a drizzle of hot honey and a little tomato paste. Enjoy the dish with hot buttermilk biscuits, fresh cornbread, or use the slow-cooked potatoes to make a buttery mash, then spoon the ham and cabbage on top.