Italian Sausage and Cabbage
An authentic, simple one pan Italian meal on the table in 20 minutes? Yes!! My Italian Sausage and Cabbage (Salsiccia con Cavolo) recipe is made with your favorite sweet or hot Italian sausage along with cabbage cooked with pancetta, onion and wine.
Table of contents
I’ve made my fair share of cabbage recipes in the past. Some good and some amazing. But, it never tasted so good as when you cook it with pancetta and wine. This meat dish is typically a secondi (second) course of a traditional Italian meal.
This dish would be served after the pasta course and can be served alongside the contorni course (side dish). An example of a contorni dish is my Roasted Asparagus with Lemon Ricotta Sauce or Tuscan Tomato Beans all’uccelletto.
Italian dishes such as this are very much like a lot of British dishes in origin from days past as it’s a traditional dish of the peasants. Inexpensive ingredients turned into a tasty meal.
If you’re not a fan of cabbage (some people aren’t – I get it), a similar dish I have created is my Italian Sausage and Bean Casserole. This is very much like the tomato beans, but with added meat.
Optional additions to add
Sliced potatoes, cooked pasta, peas, or any vegetable you like. I like to serve the sausages whole, but you can slice them.
Cabbage Serving Suggestions
Even though this is an authentic Italian dish, you can serve the cabbage as a side without the sausage with any of your favorite fish, chicken, beef or lamb.
Wine substitute
If you don’t want to use wine, you can substitute chicken, vegetable or beef stock/broth.
If you’ve made this recipe, have a comment or question, leave it below. I love to hear from my readers.
Italian Sausage and Cabbage
Video
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more if needed
- 8 Italian sausage, mild, sweet or spicy
- ⅓ cup (85 grams) pancetta, diced small
- 2 cups (310 grams) onion , cut in half then slice into strips
- 2 garlic cloves, grated
- 1 pound (453 grams) green cabbage, cut into strips
- ¼ cup (60 ml) pinot grigio wine
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
- Add the oil to a large frying pan/skillet over medium-high heat. Brown the sausages evenly on all sides, turning often. Remove and place into a plate and cover with foil.
- Turn the heat down to medium, add more oil if needed. Add pancetta and onions, toss well and cook until the onions soften, about 10 minutes, tossing often.
- Add the garlic, mix well then add add the cabbage, wine, salt and pepper. Toss well. Cook until the cabbage has wilted and is cooked.
- Place the sausages into the cabbage and cook until the internal temperature reaches 165°F/74°C using a meat thermometer. Serve immediately.
Usually, I am one who goes looking for recipes to cook. This instance was a time when the recipe decided to find me instead, and it turned out to be a good call. There was another reason for me to stumble onto here, but this recipe fell into line at the right time.
There was a bit of cabbage which was staritng to get old, and desperately had to be used. It was also helping me get into an idea of knowing to cook regularly, but not having to break the bank in the long term. A couple of the items needed to be bought fresh, including one that was already used in a previous dish by me. Also, you can’t go wrong with an Italian dish either.
I cooked this for my parents, and they were quite impressed. About the only thing to improve was cooking the sausages a little longer – that’s on my end – and everything else worked well. The garlic was both sharp and subtle at the same time, since I used the microplane to grate it, and my dad was impressed I cooked with wine for once. As for the cabbage, it was at just the right texture.
This is one of those meals to have on back-up for short notice on low times. The overall cost was fairly low, it was substantial and managed to feed three people fairly well. That was with a side of garlic bread thrown in for good measure.
N.B. Try as I might, could not get pancetta – that would have made it even nicer.
Thank you so much for the feedback. I hope you’re able to try it with pancetta next time.
Easy and flavorful! used bacon for pancetta. Although I loved the dish, I imagine the pancetta would only improve it.
Yes, if you used smoked bacon it would change the flavor dramatically as pancetta is not smoked.
This was so good! One of the best cabbage meals we’ve had. We used bacon instead of pancetta because it’s what we had on hand. Would do it again the exact same way!
Thank you so much, it’s one of my favorite ways to enjoy cabbage.
Perfect meal. The taste was unbelievable.
This is a great recipe. I highly recommend this. It was easy and simple to prepare.
Thank you so much. It’s one of my favorites.
I will be trying this tonight. In using bacon and bacon grease to cook my cabbage in.
Hope it turns out great tasting.
That’s a great idea, enjoy.