Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup — Sylvia’s New Year’s Eve Good Luck Soup

New Year's Eve again. 2017 becoming 2018. Marvin and I in our positions — him in the recliner, me at the kitchen table — the way every New Year's Eve has found us for the past twenty-three years, since the Steinberg party incident of 1994 that ended our careers as New Year's Eve socialites. I am fine with this. I am more than fine. I am a woman who has found peace in the predictable, who has discovered that the repeated evening is not a smaller life but a deeper one.

I made Sylvia's cabbage soup for New Year's — a tradition I've maintained since she died. Cabbage soup on New Year's Eve, because Sylvia believed that cabbage on New Year's brought good fortune, a superstition she inherited from her mother, who inherited it from Eastern European Jewish folklore, which inherited it from Polish tradition, which is how food superstitions work: they cross borders, they shed their origins, and by the time they reach your kitchen they feel like truth even when they're closer to hope. Cabbage for luck. Why not? The soup is good. The luck can't hurt. And Sylvia believed it, and I cook what Sylvia believed.

The cabbage soup is sweet and sour — tomatoes, brown sugar, lemon juice, cabbage shredded fine, a few pieces of flanken for richness. It is the most comforting soup I know, more comforting even than chicken soup, because chicken soup is prescribed for illness and cabbage soup is prescribed for the turn of the year, for the threshold between one time and the next, and thresholds make me uneasy. I like being in the middle of things, not at the edge. The soup helps me cross.

Marvin was asleep by ten-thirty. I covered him with the blanket, turned off his reading lamp, and sat in the kitchen with my cabbage soup and my journal. I wrote about the year — about Ethan starting preschool, about Sophie walking, about the blog growing, about the two hundred and thirty readers who have become eight hundred and forty-seven readers, about the women who write me emails that start with "Dear Ruth" and end with stories of their own mothers' kitchens. I wrote about Marvin, who grated the potatoes for Hanukkah because my hands cramped, and who tells the same joke every year because the same joke every year is love in its most consistent form.

At midnight, the Goldsteins' TV reached me through the walls. I said, "Happy New Year, Marv," to the sleeping man in the recliner. He didn't hear me. It counted anyway.

This is Sylvia’s recipe, as close as I’ve been able to reconstruct it from memory and the single index card she gave me the winter before she died — smudged with what I choose to believe was tomato paste. I’ve made it every New Year’s Eve since, alone at the kitchen table after Marvin falls asleep, and I’ve made very few changes: a little more lemon, because I like the tartness to announce itself, and I shred the cabbage finer than she did, because fine cabbage drinks the broth. If you don’t keep kosher, flanken from a good butcher is what gives this soup its quiet, deep richness — but I’ve also made it vegetarian in a pinch, and the sweet and sour holds.

Sylvia’s Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 2 hours | Total Time: 2 hours 25 minutes | Servings: 6–8

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs flanken (bone-in beef short ribs cut across the bone), or substitute beef chuck cut into 2-inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small head green cabbage (about 2 lbs), cored and shredded fine
• 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
• 6 cups beef broth (or water with 1 tablespoon Better Than Bouillon)
• 3 tablespoons dark brown sugar, packed, plus more to taste
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• Fresh dill or flat-leaf parsley, for serving (optional)

Instructions

1. Brown the meat. Heat oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Pat flanken dry and season with salt and pepper. Working in batches if needed, brown the meat on all sides, about 3–4 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Do not discard the fat in the pot.
2. Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly golden, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute, until fragrant.
3. Build the broth. Add the crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes with their juices, and beef broth. Stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
4. Add the cabbage and meat. Add the shredded cabbage and nestle the browned flanken back into the pot. Add the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, partially cover, and simmer for 1 hour 30 minutes, until the meat is very tender and the cabbage has gone completely soft and silky.
5. Season the sweet-sour balance. Stir in the brown sugar, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar. Taste carefully — this is the step that matters most. Adjust with more brown sugar for sweetness, more lemon juice for brightness, and salt as needed. The soup should taste clearly both sweet and sour, neither one dominating. Simmer uncovered for another 15 minutes to let the flavors settle.
6. Finish and serve. Remove the bay leaves. If using flanken, the meat can be served bone-in in the bowl, or you can pull it off the bone, shred it, and return it to the pot — I do the latter. Ladle into deep bowls and top with fresh dill or parsley if you like. This soup is better the next day, and even better the day after that.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 21g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 24g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 780mg