Hi everybody, I'm Antony Porowski from No Taste Like Home on National Geographic.

I have my very good friend Molly Wang here.

She is an insanely talented chef.

I've brought Molly along because A, she's far more talented than I am and more of an expert.

She has Polish heritage.

And the reason we met is because of the ultimate Polish matriarch, Martha.

Who you have worked with, who I've been trolled by on social media.

And we actually got to hang out at her holiday party and now we're here making cabbage rolls.

She would be very proud of us.

I mean, I hope so.

I'm sure she would have notes.

Lots of them.

So the reason why we're doing this is because on No Taste Like Home,

I go on a journey and I explore people's family history through the lens of food.

So I was asked to think about a dish that kind of shaped me growing up.

So gołąbki or cabbage rolls for anybody who isn't Polish is an extremely traditional Polish dish.

I have had it thousands of times, no exaggeration, but I've never made it.

Because I was raised in a very matriarchal household.

My mom would make this for me at least like once a week for me and my sisters.

And I would kind of like watch from the other side of the kitchen island.

But I know you've made this before.

Yes, in my family, we were taught how to cook as soon as we had motor skills.

So we were rolling cabbage rolls.

Very different household than mine.

Very different household, yes.

Starting out, we have a Savoy cabbage and a green cabbage.

Do you have a preference?

I personally like to keep it traditional.

I like the green cabbage.

Wait, really?

Yes, I do.

No, so I love the green cabbage and this is how I had it, but I was for sure, because of your fancy fricking chef, you were gonna be like, no, let's use the Savoy cabbage.

Oh no, I like this.

This is an old school recipe.

This is like very fundamental.

Great, awesome.

So I like to save, I was taught to save the outer leaves and line the pot with them.

It kind of keeps everything insulated.

It's really beautiful.

So I like to just kind of pick them off and drop them in the water, just kind of soak.

And then while I do this, you can core it.

Awesome, is that salted water?

Oh, we should salt it.

Always salt, yes.

So the reason we're doing is that we basically want to blanch the leaves.

So we want to soften them up so they're a little easier to manipulate, so they don't like crack when they're rolling them up or putting them along the pan.

Okay, am I ready to core this?

Yes, I think you are.

So now we're just gonna go in.

Always use a blade.

I'm careful, I'm careful.

That looks great.

So let's move that over here, that dish, and I'll pull these out.

As soon as they're kind of like malleable and flexible, they're good to go.

Great.

And then you just drop this head in, that head.

Already this like, it's literally just cabbage boiling in water, but it already smells like home.

Smells like home.

Smells like every single, something about boiled cabbage smells like the Catholic church that I would go to on Christmas Eve with all the grandmas in their fur and everyone just reeked of cabbage, but in the best way possible.

In the best way possible.

Right?

Core side down.

Yeah.

Gently, carefully.

And then you just let it sit.

And once the leaves start to kind of peel off on their own, we just kind of start to remove them.

Beautiful.

These things in here.

So tell me more about your Polish heritage.

My Polish heritage?

Yes.

Before embarking on the journey of filming

No Taste Like Home,

I thought I was so aware of my heritage and I realized that I still actually have so much to kind of unpack, but both my parents are very Polish.

And so even though I'm technically Canadian,

Polish was the only language we were allowed to speak growing up.

We had a lot of Polish food and gołąbki or cabbage rolls was like definitely one of them.

So Polish cuisine was like a real staple of your childhood.

A hundred percent.

Okay.

So see, they're just kind of like coming out off on their own.

You don't really have to do much to guide it, but they'll just kind of come off.

It really is coming off just one at a time, beautifully like that.

We're going to do a quick little reset here and then are we going to start on the sauce?

Yes, let's make the sauce.

Perfect.

How do we get started?

So it's a very simple sauce.

And the great thing about this sauce is that you don't have to do anything to it because it's going to cook and develop with the cabbage in the oven later.

So really it's just about getting everything in one place all together.

So a few tablespoons of olive oil and we've got two cups of minced onion.

Beautiful dice.

Beautiful dice.

Which neither of us can take credit for.

No.

So we want to sweat those out.

Yeah.

While those are going, we're going to add our tomatoes, crushed tomatoes.

Two cans.

Yup.

Okay, so waste not, want not.

Right?

This is my favorite.

I'm letting you do it.

Okay.

In our house growing up, nothing went to waste.

This, not happening.

You do not throw this out.

Also, it didn't work in recycling.

So you would always rinse it out with a little bit of water.

And then I would just kind of like run it along the side.

And the water is a part of this recipe.

So we're just making it all happen.

So there's a reason for it.

Yeah.

And then you just like shush it around a little.

I love that you stepped back because you thought I was going to get some on you.

Good job wearing black.

I do not have a wardrobe change.

See, look, and it's all nice and clean and it's ready to go in the recycling.

So two cans of tomato, two cups of onion.

A really nice hefty pinch of salt.

Yes.

Okay.

So to make it sweet and sour, equal parts vinegar and sugar.

Okay.

Light brown sugar.

It's about a quarter cup.

Okay.

And, you know, I'm eyeballing it here, but you could measure a quarter cup.

See, like this is the part that I never saw because I was probably at school or at like swim practice when the sauce was being made and reducing and doing its thing.

Bring it up to a simmer.

Reserve a cup of sauce on the side for the filling.

And then the rest will kind of get layered into the pot.

So this is it.

This is just, we're just going to like leave it here and let it do its thing again.

One thing about Polish people, we don't need spices.

No.

Margarine, throw it in everything.

Have I ever used it as an adult?

Absolutely not.

We're up to a simmer.

Okay.

You can bring the bowl over here.

Okay.

So you're going to reserve about a cup of sauce here.

And again, it's, you know, you can see the onions are not fully cooked.

That's totally fine.

They're going to soften.

And that looks like about a cup to me.

There you go.

Perfect.

Thanks.

We've got a cup of sauce, and then this is very easy.

This is a half a cup of rice, a half a cup of breadcrumbs, a half a cup of chopped onions.

Those all go in.

Yep.

There is some talk about par cooking the rice beforehand.

I think it's an unnecessary step.

Breadcrumbs are so integral to Polish culture.

To this day, when I visit my father in Vermont, he has a recipe for breadcrumbs.

In Vermont, he has like 10 bags of breadcrumbs that he keeps from bread whenever it goes stale from his favorite bakery that he refuses to throw out.

He's never going to be able to use all that.

I throw it out for the birds and he gets all pissed at me.

But anyway, breadcrumbs are like a big deal in Polish cuisine.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

It brought back a lot of childhood memories for me, obviously.

Okay.

We're plopping these in.

Deep breath.

Great, deep breaths.

Okay, so then now we have some spices.

Two teaspoons of fresh thyme, paprika, and caraway seeds.

Yep.

Which is also new to me.

I didn't really ever put caraway seeds in mine.

Okay, so two eggs.

Okay.

Do you really think that it's more dangerous to crack it on the side of the bowl because the shell goes in?

I think it's a personal preference.

I mean, people do what they want to do, you know?

Nice big pinch of salt.

Perfect.

Some pepper.

And we're doing pork and beef today.

Yep.

Go ahead.

I'm mixing it, great.

I get why some people use gloves, but it just doesn't feel like there's as much love in it.

It's a disconnect.

There's a disconnect.

Yeah, it's a disconnect.

And if your hands are clean, which mine are,

I don't know about yours.

I hope they are.

I wasn't petting my dog three minutes.

No, I'm kidding.

I definitely wash my hands.

While I'm manhandling this raw meat, why don't you tell us about the vegetarian version?