Cabbage Casserole Recipe Oven or Slow Cooker
This slow cooker cabbage casserole is one of the easiest recipes you could ever make. Four or five ingredients, and you can leave one or two of them out if you want. Totally up to you.
Todays recipe can be made in the Crock Pot as shown or in the oven. By using spaghetti sauce in place of tomatoes and tomato sauce, you save a little money and also cut out the need for additional seasonings, but you can add those in as well if you like.
This recipe is versatile and dependable and you can easily make it in the oven as well.
Ingredients To Cabbage Casserole For Crockpot or Oven You’ll Need:
- Cooked Ground Beef*
- Onion
- Cabbage (well it is Cabbage casserole after all) 🙂
- Spaghetti Sauce
- Water or Beef Broth
Use whatever spaghetti sauce you grab first.
Should I Use Fresh or Dehydrated Ground Beef?
You can use fresh ground beef that you’ve cooked or even dehydrated ground beef if you have that (here is my video on how to do it). If you use fresh, cook it first. If you use freeze dried, just add some water to it and let it sit for 3-5 minutes before using. If you are using dehydrated, cover it with hot water and let it sit for ten minutes (or so).
Taste Testing Your Casserole’s Sauce Is Always a Good Thing
How well seasoned your casserole is going to be depends on how well seasoned your sauce is. Once it is done cooking you can have a taste and then add more herbs or spices if you like. Or add them at the start if you prefer.
How To Make Cabbage Casserole
Mama called while I was doing this and said “Now if your chopping onions, make them real small, not like you normally do…”
I like big slices of onion in my dishes because I like onion, so I slice mine big. Mama likes the taste of onion but not the experience of biting into a whole hunk of it, so she chops hers really tiny. Mama, I tried. This is as small as I can get and I made it that small just because of you.
I had initially pictured large slices but at __ years of age, I still mind my Mama.
Chop up cabbage
Making in Oven?
Now right here you can saute the onions in a tablespoon of butter and boil the cabbage til its tender if you like or you can just add the beef broth or water to the pan. If you add the liquid later it just takes a little more time to cook to get the cabbage tender, that’s all. Then layer in as described below. See the recipe card below for Oven temperature and time.
But in the Crockpot…
Put a layer of chopped cabbage and chopped onion in the bottom of your slow cooker.
Top with ground beef.
Add 1/2 of the spaghetti sauce.
Repeat that with one more layer.
Gently pour 1 cup water around the edges. You could also add beef broth here if you like.
Cover.
In Slow Cooker Cook on low, 7-8 hours or high 3-4.
In Oven:
if you boiled the cabbage ahead of time you can cook at 350 for 30 mins. But if you like the extra flavor like I do then I add the beef broth in right before cooking. Which means I cook it for about 1 hour, stirring halfway through. Some times I add rice in there too. That adds another can of beef broth (14 oz) and taste about a half hour longer to get the rice fluffy. But you can also cook the rice separate and serve the casserole on top of the rice. You do you!
Stir well before serving.
Now you can eat this on it’s own or serve it over rice or while riding a donkey backwards and playing a banjo. Totally up to you.
Ingredients
- 1/2 head cabbage chopped
- 1 lb ground beef cooked and drained
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice
- 1 cup water or 1 can of beef broth
- Additional seasonings: salt pepper, herbs, garlic powder, etc to taste (I didn't add any additional)
Instructions
- In 4-6 quart slow cooker, place 1/2 of cabbage. Top with 1/2 of onions, 1/2 of beef, and 1/2 of spaghetti sauce. Repeat once more. Pour water around the sides into the slow cooker (To keep from disturbing the spaghetti sauce)
- Cover and place on low 7-8 hours or high, 3-4 hours.
- Serve on it's own or over rice.
NOTE: How well seasoned your casserole is going to be depends on how well seasoned your sauce is. Once it is done cooking you can have a taste and then add more herbs or spices if you like. Or add them at the start if you prefer.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
You may also enjoy these casserole recipes:
Green Bean Casserole Rich, Creamy With The Perfect Crunch
Cornbread Casserole Recipe Simple and Savory
Ham Egg and Cheese Casserole (Insta Pot or Oven!)
Cracker Barrel Hash Brown Casserole Cheesy Copycat
“Keep your face always toward sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.”
~Walt Whitman
Submitted by Valerie Manuel. Click here to submit your own.
Oh Christy! You tickle me! I was cracking up!! You are so down to Earth, I feel like we could be best frieds! I love your “no fussiness” homestyle recipes. You seem like such a good, honest to goodness down home person! THANK YOU! You always brighten my day and make me smile.
You are too sweet Cathy!! I imagine we would be great friends as well!
🙂 Have you and Katy read The Doll People series by Ann M. Martin? Seems like you would enjoy as much as I enjoyed reading it to my girls when they were a little younger. And it just might help you think like a doll and find Trent!
I will have to check the books out, sounds like they would be right up our alley!! Thank you so much for the suggestion!
I prefer cabbage rolls in brown gravy. Wondering how to adapt your recipe Christy. Maybe a pot roast sauce in place of tomatoes? Love your family’s AL adventures!
Love your recipes Christy. I fix them often for my wife and me……. And I read many of the comments but have noticed that I seem to be the only male…..makes me feel a little weird. lol
heehee! I’m sorry Ken but let me assure you that you are not the only male! As a matter of fact, my demographic data tells me that my readership is anywhere from 40-50% male at any given time. Most of them just don’t chime in on the comments! Thank YOU for making this a more male friendly post today 🙂
My first thought, who is Trent? Your first reply…lol!!! Have you check the camper? Sometimes he likes to get away by himself!! We are not fans of cabbage, but I just may throw this at my family. Anything to help find Trent!!
Love the recipe, but still thinking about the ever disappearing Trent! Now if someone would get him a rodeo outfit and maybe a hoss, you could enter him into the local PBR and maybe he could start making money for you all and now carousing it all away! LOL!! A friend of mine told me one afternoon that I could get down with the best of the 3-year olds! I was waiting on her and she was like 2 hours late already and the little 3-year old girl who lived next door was sent outside to play until dinner was ready. Well, it was springtime, the weather was gorgeous and we started finding ladybug babies all over the yard! Now those little critters look like teeny teeny weeny red-orange and black striped alligators. I hadn’t ever seen one before but I definitely looked it up on the computer when I got home. We were just pointing them out to each other, not picking any of them up because I knew that they would be really fragile and I wanted to build in a lesson in our game about respecting and protecting nature. Between the baby ladybugs and teaching her how to make a mouth whistle out of a piece of wide-bladed grass we were definitely keeping each other occupied! (When she first came out, she was screaming and bawling and literally throwing a fit!) So, it was either get creative or go nuts. I picked the creative. Her mom called her in about the same time my friend showed up and we went out to dinner too. But I sure did enjoy those couple of hours! And Trent reminded me that you can keep that childlike mind even when you’re a young 63 like me!! Send me happy birthday wishes (through the air in wishes and prayers) because the official date is the 17th! Don’t know what I’m gonna do yet, And if any of you can come up with a really unusual combination of frosting to cake, let me know, I like to go untraditional. Like lemon cake with white frosting with candy canes, peppermints, chocolate peppermints, cinnamon candies, well you get the idea, crushed up and mixed up into the frosting. Or lemon cake with strawberry or cherry frosting. Chocolate cake with lemon frosting. Orange cake with cool whip topping that has had an orange zested into it with just a smidge of orange liquer (and yes, I am old enough for it!).
HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY JUDI! I like to make a key lime cake with cream cheese frosting that has lime jest and a little lime juice in it the drizzle the top of the frosting with blueberry pie filling letting a little drip down the sides. I also garnish the top of the blueberry pie filling with lime peel curls. Yummy and pretty to boot.
Hope Trent returns home with both of his shoes!! For Katy’s sake………