Is cabbage usually cooked or eaten raw?

There was a time when I thought that you only ever cooked cabbage before eating it. My mother would always boil her cabbage and make stew with it or she would always fry it up and add carrots into whatever meals she was preparing. To me, cabbage wasn't really eaten raw except by those people who eat only salads and all their food cold.

One day, I went over to the house of a friend and she simply cut her cabbage up very thin, added in some shredded carrots, mayonnaise and called the whole thing coleslaw. Because I was not familiar with that way of preparing cabbage, I was a bit surprised by the taste of the coleslaw because I did not expect it to taste as good as it did, but at the same time I wondered if it could be right, it was almost like eating yam that hadn't been cooked.

Facts is cabbage can be eaten and prepared in a number of different ways, which can be somewhat confusing to some people. There are many different ways you can cook cabbage, boiling, frying, steaming, and many other methods. Some people will tell you that if you cook cabbage for too long, it will smell bad and this is true, I've tried that. I have made cabbage that stinks up the whole kitchen because I cooked it too long and the smell was something that made me want to vomit.

For the most part, I still prefer to eat cabbage cooked. I think that is because I grew up eating cooked cabbage, but I do enjoy fresh raw cabbage when I add lime or lemon juice and fresh lime juice and when I chop it up very finely. I love eating crunchy, light meals from fresh raw cabbage and the taste of lima or lemon juice with it is just delicious.

Which of the two is more common? I don't even know anymore. It is based upon the region where you are preparing the cabbage and the items that you are preparing with the cabbage, as well as your personal preference for a certain day. To be honest, both ways are fine.