There are a few tips that I recommend to making good cabbage rolls: Use the freshest cabbage that you can find. Don’t use the half dry cabbage because the fresher the cabbage leaves are the more liquid and flavour they will give out. Autumn and winter are a great time for cabbage. Try using different sorts of cabbage like savoy or other. Use all the leaves apart from the very first few outside ones and the leaves surrounding the centre core of the cabbage. I like to use most of the leaves and try to use the entire cabbage apart from the centre…I compost the first few leaves as they are just a bit too tough but the rest of the usable leaves I separate and blanch in hot water. Once they are all in the pot I recommend cooking the cabbage rolls for longer as the dark and stronger leaves do take a bit longer to cook just to soften them. Just test one roll after about 1 hour of cooking and decide for yourself if you would like the cabbage rolls even softer. Don’t forget to season all the different elements and make sure there is enough liquid that just covers the cabbage rolls or 1 cm under so that the cabbage rolls all cook through evenly. Some nice ingredients and flavourings I recommend experimenting with is using different sorts of grains (rice or millet) and using fresh tomatoes, cooked tomatoes, passata sauce, grated carrot or diced capsicums. Freshly ground caraway seeds are also a nice addition to the meat mix. You can use pre cooked rice, half pre cooked rice or raw rice in the filling mixture.