Grilled Cabbage with Miso Butter
Lunch | Japanese
How do chefs make vegetables taste so good? It's not as hard as you think, we generally just focus on one vegetable and work out about how to bring out the flavours, add a pairing flavour and add more texture to it.
So for this recipe we're taking the humble sugarloaf cabbage, adding olive oil and salt to bring out its flavours and cooking it on the grill until it's nice and charred. Cooking until charred brings out the sweetness in it and adds an incredible texture. Then we'll create a miso butter to bring a rich, umami element to it.
Ingredients
- 1 sugarloaf cabbage, quartered
- 1 tbsp neutral oil (vegetable, canola, peanut)
- sea salt, to season
- 100g butter, at room temperature
- 1½ tbsp white miso
- 1 tbsp mirin
- fried shallots, to serve
Directions
- Preheat a grill to medium-high heat.
- Drizzle cut sides of cabbage with oil and season with salt.
- Place cabbage cut side down on the grill and cook, turning, for 10-15 minutes until charred all over.
- Combine butter, miso, mirin and a pinch of salt in a medium bowl, beat with a spoon until completely mixed together. Alternatively you could use a mini food processor to bring butter mixture together.
- Spread cut sides of cabbage with miso butter and allow to cook, outer curved side down, until butter mixture melts through, about 5 minutes.
- Serve sprinkled with fried shallots.
Recipe notes
Sugarloaf cabbage:
A sweet, pointed variety with tender, loosely packed leaves. More delicate than round cabbage and better suited to high-heat grilling since it chars without going bitter. Find it at farmers’ markets, Asian grocery stores or a good greengrocer. If unavailable, savoy cabbage cut into quarters is the best substitute. It takes slightly longer to cook but grills well.
White miso:
Also called shiro miso, it’s the mildest and sweetest of the miso varieties. It brings umami and saltiness to the butter without the fermented intensity of red or brown miso, which may overpower the cabbage. Sold in small tubs or packets at Japanese grocery stores, Asian supermarkets and increasingly at major supermarkets in the health food or Asian aisle.
Mirin:
A sweet Japanese rice wine used in cooking. It adds a mild sweetness and gloss to the miso butter and softens the saltiness of the miso. Find it in the Asian cooking aisle. If unavailable, substitute with 1 teaspoon of caster sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon of rice wine vinegar and add it in the same way.