Hi, my name is Beth and sometimes I eat weird things. But if ten years of blogging has taught me anything it’s that a surprising number of you also like to eat weird things. After all, getting experimental in the kitchen leads to some of the most amazing flavor discoveries! So this slightly unusual BBQ Beef and Cabbage concoction is for all of you recipe risk takers out there. I hope you find it as uniquely satisfying as I did!
This simple skillet meal starts with one of my favorite combos, beef and cabbage, adds a sweet and tangy homemade BBQ-like sauce, and ends with creamy cheddar and fresh green onion. It’s kind of like a cross between Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry, Sloppy Joes, and my Monterey Chicken Skillet. It’s not a “pretty” dish, but it’s flavorful, very filling, and gets you a good dose of vegetables. And, if you want to stretch this meal even further, you can always serve it over cooked rice.
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P.S. While I was editing these photos the green onion started to look like jalapeño and I had to kick myself for not thinking of adding jalapeño while I was making it. Super thinly sliced jalapeño would be absolutely KILLER on this dish! Also, this recipe is very flexible. If you want to use a whole pound of beef there should be plenty of sauce to accommodate.
BBQ Beef and Cabbage
Servings 3 About 1.5 cups eachIngredients
- 1 Tbsp olive oil ($0.16)
- 1/2 lb. lean ground beef ($2.65)
- 1 small onion ($0.32)
- 1 tsp smoked paprika ($0.10)
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder ($0.02)
- 3/4 tsp salt, divided ($0.04)
- 4-6 cups shredded cabbage (about one pound) ($0.60)
- 8 oz. tomato sauce ($0.47)
- 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar ($0.06)
- 2 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.08)
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce ($0.06)
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard ($0.03)
- 2 oz. shredded cheddar ($0.50)
- 1 green onion, sliced ($0.10)
Instructions
- Add the olive oil and ground beef to a large skillet and cook over medium heat. Begin to break up the beef as it browns.
- While the beef is browning, finely dice the onion. Add the onion, paprika, garlic powder, and salt to the skillet with the ground beef and continue to cook over medium heat until the onions are soft.
- While the onions and beef are cooking, finely shred the cabbage. Once the onions are soft, add 1/4 cup water to the skillet and stir to dissolve any browned bits off the bottom of the skillet. Add the shredded cabbage and stir to combine. Place a lid on the skillet and let simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage has wilted.
- Add the tomato sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon to the skillet. Stir to combine and let simmer a few more minutes without the lid, or until the liquid in the skillet has reduced slightly. Taste the sauce and add more salt if needed (I added 1/4 tsp).
- Finally, top the beef and cabbage with the shredded cheddar, place the lid back on the skillet for 1-2 minutes, or until the cheese has melted. Top with sliced green onions then serve.
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Nutrition
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How to Make BBQ Beef and Cabbage – Step by Step Photos
Start by browning 1/2 lb. lean ground beef in a large skillet with 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat. While the beef is browning, finely dice an onion. Add the onion to the skillet along with 1 tsp smoked paprika, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Continue to cook over medium until the onions are soft.
While the onions are cooking with the beef, shred the cabbage. You’ll need about 4-6 cups shredded, or about 1 lb. (this was 1/2 head of cabbage for me). Before adding the cabbage, add 1/4 cup water to the skillet and stir to dissolve any browned bits from the bottom, then add the cabbage and stir to combine.
Place a lid on the skillet and let it simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the cabbage is wilted. The lid is important because it holds in the steam and helps wilt the cabbage faster.
Finally, add 8oz. tomato sauce, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, and 1 tsp Dijon mustard. Stir to combine and let the sauce simmer for a few minutes without the lid, or until it’s not so liquidy in the bottom of the skillet.
Taste the sauce and add more salt if needed (I added an additional 1/4 tsp). Top the skillet with 2 oz. shredded cheddar cheese, place the lid back on top, and let it heat until the cheese is melted.
Then, top with sliced green onions just before serving. :)
What do you think? BBQ Beef and Cabbage yay or nay?
Great GF weekday meal that’s saucy and satisfying! Not sure how it fares for reheating or freezing, but there were no leftovers to test. Definitely adding into rotation for days when I’m sick of the asian beef and cabbage. I try to have a cabbage meal at least once a week during the winter, so having new options rocks 😎
Definitely YAY. I loved the sweetness. I did not use the cheese and did not miss it. I served it along rice as a GF option, my kids and husband ate it with spaghetti noodles.
Delicious! I’m a cabbage fan and always looking for a new recipe to use it. This was the perfect after work dinner because it came together quickly and tasted great. And it’s healthy. I will be adding this into my regular rotation. Thanks for another great recipe.
I took a big chance on this and I wasn’t disappointed. I loved this! My kids loved it! My cabbage hating boyfriend liked it! Green cabbage prices are astronomical right now (eight-ish bucks for a head!) so I got a 1 lb bag of coleslaw, so mine had a few shredded carrots in it, and even saved myself having to shred a head. Absolutely will make this again!
I used Napa cabbage and banana vinegar because that’s what I had on hand. I’m happy with the vinegar, but I think next time I make this I’ll go back to green cabbage – the napa cabbage gets a little too soft. (still, I enjoyed this enough that I will definitely be making it again, maybe with corn muffins to go with and soak up a little of the leftover sauce)
I made this for lunch today and it was a hit! My kids said it tasted like a sweet cheeseburger in a bowl.
Hi Beth! I like weird food too. Can’t wait to try this for dinner tonight. Do you think it would freeze well? Do you have a list of recipes that would? Looking to start freezer prepping for when my next baby is due. Thanks!!
I’m not sure this one would be the best for freezing. I feel like the cabbage would get too soft and watery. I don’t have a list of recipes that are best for freezing since it can often times be very subjective. Some people are more sensitive to the flavor and texture changes than others. :)
I really enjoyed this. I tried it twice, using full pound of extra lean both times. The second time was easy better because i skipped the water. Cabbage has enough water and skipping the extra makes the sauce way more flavorful.
Also, i used sharp cheddar. Very yummy great recipe!
Delicious and easy. Flavor combo on point.
Made this for dinner tonight. We enjoyed it very much. What is the calorie count per serving?
Sorry about that, I’m not sure why that one got missed! The nutrition information is now in the bottom of the recipe card.
I love that I have a half-pound of lean ground beef in my freezer from the last recipe I tried on this site, & now I have a way to use it up. Thank you!
This was very good. Next time I think I will try using ground turkey or chicken to cut out some fat or maybe even using canned beans as a vegetarian option.
I haven’t tried this yet, but this totally fits the bill. In Japan where we live food is nearly twice the cost of in the states. I’m always looking for cheap, easy meals to feed my family (usually served over brown rice). And ground meat is super expensive, so I LOVE that your recipes usually call for 1/2 pound. Totally going to try this one out. Everyone at my house is pretty tired of our current meal rotation, including myself. Thanks for such cheap, easy ideas!
Very good. We added cumin, Chile powder, jalapeño and one Chile in adobo sauce.
Absolutely loved this. Garnished with diced jalapeños instead of the green onions and it was great. This was such a great way to use up a bunch of cabbage.
I made this vegan by using daiya cheese and meatless ground meat. This was REALLY delicious!! Even my 8 year old loved it! We had no leftovers.
THIS is delicious! Another BudgetBytes win. Second time making it. I also make a vegetarian version for me. I served it with a street corn concoction. No leftovers. It was devoured!!
Good stuff!
I bought the world’s second largest head of savoy cabbage, because the store was out of regular green cabbage. I’m not kidding, it was larger than a dinner plate! So we were forced to make lots of dinner recipes with cabbage, and when I told my husband I was making a ground beef and cabbage recipe yesterday, he was… less than excited. Fast forward to dinner time and, even though I used a full pound of beef, I only ever got to eat one bowl because he hoovered the whole rest of the pan. So I’d say this was a success.
It seems like a lot of stuff goes into this dish but doesn’t really show up in the flavour. I still liked it quite a bit but will deff be doubling up the spices. Super filling too!
I really wanted to love this- it was a miss for us. I took some of the other recommendations and added to the dish, but the flavors seemed muddy to me- it wasn’t my favorite this go around. Thanks for all the wonderful recipe suggestions.
We doubled the spices, as a general rule your recipes are not flavorful enough for us. We added a bit of Heinz 57 steak sauce and a smidge more Dijon, as well as MSG. It was definitely weird at first, but by the end of the pot both my husband and I declared it a huge success. Definitely on the “make again” list!
OMG! Hinez 57 is what it’s missing! You’re bang on!
Ooooh, as I was making this I saw this comment. We only had A1 in our fridge, but I added a splash of it and it really brought out a lot of the flavors!
This was definitely weird but tasty!! I would make again if I had a lot of cabbage to use!
Very good! I added a Serrano, minced garlic, extra chilli powder, and a few shakes of cumin. Use broth instead of water if you have it. This recipe is a really good jumping off point because there’s a lot of room to customize.
I served it over Jasmine rice and left off the cheese because the flavors are already well balanced.
I think this recipe was amazing! I made a vegan version by substituting the beef for a plant based alternative and skipping the cheese. It was very flavorful, even my non vegan mother loved it. I love making the vegan version of your recipes for all the variety of ideas. Thanks again!
Made this vegan by replacing the beef with finely chopped tempeh and it was delicious!!! Highly recommend
Oh that’s awesome to know! Thank you so much for sharing Luce!
Can you give me the Brand and size and model of skillet you use for this recipe? Is it OXO?
Yes, that is the OXO 3 quart deep sauté pan. :)
Thank You! I used my Le Creuset Dutch Oven bc my skillet wasn’t deep enough. It was delicious! Will make this again.
This wasn’t on the menu, but the motor on my ebike broke down on the way to the grocery store and I had to stop and push it back up (about 300 elevation gain)… I had to work with what I had at home which was cabbage and 1/2 lb ground beef… definitely didn’t love it, but it was so awesome to have a home-cooked meal ready before my husband came home from work. Full bellies. Money saved. Priorities were taken care of!
That’s what it’s all about! :)
The photos of your step by step recipe makes my tummy grumble. Now I know what to cook for tomorrow’s dinner. :)
I make your Beef Cabbage Stir Fry and Monterray Chicken Skillet regularly. This sounds awesome!
I made this! I ended up with about a pound of ground beef defrosted, and I just chopped up the entire small head of cabbage – it was more like 8 cups of cabbage – but I had enough sauce to cover it all.
I messed up the sauce – somehow read 2T of Worchestershire instead of 1 – so my sauce wasn’t tangy at all – I ended up throwing a tablespoon or so of some Woody’s “Cook-in” BBQ marinade that I had in the fridge – gave it a bit of spice, and a deep smoky bbq flavour!
Definitely a keeper – next time I will try the sauce *correctly* – but I like a tangy bbq sauce, so I may need more vinegar :)
I really enjoyed this recipe! It definitely sounds a little strange at first, but they taste like health-ified sloppy joes.
It seems delicious and I will try to serve it to my family. Thanks for the recipe
Super yummy, as always with your creations! I’m doing low-carb and love any meal with cabbage as the base. I used a full pound of beef and there was plenty of sauce. I added the jalapeno as suggested and used only half an onion to reduce carbs. I also used a natural sugar substitute (swerve). My husband loved it too – we divided it into 4 servings. This will be great for meal prep! Thanks for thinking outside the box on your recipes, Beth!
Hi Beth, do you have any suggested recipes for using the other 1/2 lb of meat? Thank you!
I usually freeze the other half for later, but you can browse my ground beef recipes to look for more ideas. :) Most of my recipes only use 1/2 lb.
Was good but next time I will try cutting back on the brown sugar as it was a bit too sweet for our tastes. Otherwise quite tasty!
This was so delightful, with a definite undercurrent of, “hmm.. this is weird but I love it.” It sort of tasted like a cheeseburger? Or maybe like what Hamburger Helper wants to be on its best day. I had a tiny bit left over, not enough for a full meal, and mixed it with pasta for lunch. Super yum, will be making again for sure.
Not weird in this house! Looks yum☺️
I make shredded BBQ (any meat) in the slow cooker and always add onion, mushroom, carrot, and cabbage. Then we often use this concoction for nachos! The cabbage is barely noticeable and carrots slow cooked in BBQ sauce is amazing. Plus I’m adding a decent volume of ingredients that are much cheaper than meat.
I have learned though, if you have people over…….you should probably warn them that you put carrots on your nachos 😂
Hahaha that’s a good lesson. :D Do you do regular carrots on your tacos or pickled carrots? Pickled carrots are AWESOME on tacos!
I LOVED this. I added some chipotle along with just a touch of the adobo sauce, and it was a very tasty addition. This dish is going into my regular rotation along with your beef and cabbage recipe!
I also tried a bit version (believe it or not) some leftover cocktail meatballs – you know the ones that so many people make as appetizers over the holidays? They’ve been simmered in a combination of grape jelly and chili sauce, which was a little scary. I used those instead of the ground beef, and used the sauce they had been simmered in instead of the tomato sauce. It turned out great. Ugly, but great!
What are your thoughts about freezing this?
I probably wouldn’t freeze this one because it will cause the cabbage to break down even more and seep more water.
I tend to get burnt out on putting rice in the bottom of my meal preps — even though most guides recommend a certain protein/vegetable/grain ratio. But cabbage is, hands-down, my favorite substitute for rice. It takes on the flavor of whatever you put in the container with it, and it’s mild and filling! I’ve sauteed cabbage with herbs and placed it under your garden meatloaves, too! I can’t wait to try this recipe! It sounds freakin’ delicious!
This is the exact reason I read this blog so religiously. Great new idea Beth! we all loved it.
…boyfriend just suggested a Korean barbecue version of this with kimchi…woah. Will be trying this and that stat.
Oooh, I love that idea!!
Yay!
This looks really good – I am pinning it to try it. I have a chunk of purple cabbage in the fridge that needs to be used – not going to make a *pretty* dish – but I bet it will taste good :)
Want to try Beth, sounds both fast and delicious!
This recipe sounds great. However, I’m concerned that between the cabbage and the barbecue no one would want to be in the same room with me for 15 or 18 hours after I finished dinner.
Oh, gurl….another recipe like Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry (which I just made for probably the 10th time last week. It’s one of my all-time favorites from you.)! This is going right in my queue. I love recipes that use only 1/2 pound of ground beef because my grocery always seems to package beef in 1/2 lb. increments. Will update when I’ve eaten up the BBQ beef-cabbage-y goodness. And definitely doing the jalapeno suggestion.
Oh man, I WISH my grocery sold beef in 1/2 lb. portions! Haha, I always have to freeze half. :)
Yay! DUH! Yay!
Your barbecue sauce is nearly identical to one I have been using to top meatloaf for decades–a recipe that originated in Iowa, although that recipe used plain old yellow ball park style mustard since none of us in that part of the world had yet seen a bottle of Dijon mustard. To spice up this recipe, I would vote for chipotle instead of jalapeno. Chipotles can be very hot–I open a can and put 1 pepper and a bit of the adobo sauce in a snack sized plastic bag and throw them into the freezer, so even one of those tiny 8 oz cans goes a long way. I often use less than one pepper, shaving some of the frozen pepper and sauce into a recipe for some smoky zip. They truly are the original barbecue flavor, and it doesn’t take much to add character. I might add a whole one, minced, to a 3-4 quart pot of chili, 1/4th of a single pepper to a pint of barbecue sauce, a batch of mac and cheese, or a couple of quarts of chicken broth for tortilla soup. Chipotles are jalapenos, but ripened and smoked so the flavor profile is quite different.
I personally hate scallions, but have potted chives so will garnish with either those or chopped cilantro.
Thank you Beth for the dry spice mix recipes and now the barbeque sauce recipe. (I think I will figure it out from this one-pot recipe. I am now doing no grains. so prepared sauces are often pitfalls. Also the bulking up with canbage is an idea I will keep. :-)
Do you think this would work with ground turkey? I can’t have red meat but LOVE BBQ flavours and tjos sounds awesome.
Sure! :)
We just bought a half a pig, so I’m going to try it with ground pork.
This looks amazing! Who would’ve thought cabbage + BBQ?!
P.S. I eat weird things too ;)
If you make this for meal prep, don’t do the cheese until you portion it out. Took me like four recipes like this one too figure that out.
If anyone is interested in a vegetarian alternative, I make barbeque cabbage and serve it over oven fries, topped with cheddar curds!
Nice!!