Choose a medium to large firm head of cabbage...it should be heavy for its size. Remove the first few outer leaves and rinse off. You can core it if you want, but I leave mine in tact because the remainder of othe head will stay fresher in the fridge. That will be cole slaw some night soon.
This is about half a head, cut in large chunks.
Place in a large sauce pan and season with about 2 spoons of sugar, crushed red pepper, a little bacon grease and enough water to come up about a fourth of the way from the bottom. This is one of those "as you like" dishes...we like enough sugar to smell sweet and enough crushed pepper to make you sniffle. The bacon grease I keep in the freezer and just chunk off about a teaspoon to give the cabbage a little bacon flavor.
Cover the pan and cook over medium heat until it's done, again as you like it. I cook mine until it's just tender and still has a little green color. You can cook it to crisp tender or gray...what it's called when it is nearly translucent and almost mushy. Grayed cabbage is good with hot cornbread...pour the cabbage and some of the liquid over the bread.
This is when ours was done. As you can see, it loses a good bit of volume so you need to fill your pan full. If you over fill the pan, just sit the lid on top and as it cooks the lid will shut. It only takes about 20 minutes or so, depending on how done you want it to be.
This was about $.75 worth of cabbage, the pork chops were less than $4.00, and we have leftovers for lunch.
