I`d like to give you some very good ideas to making a famous hungarian GOULASH.Very famous,well known dish all over the world.I give you a classic hungarian goulash recepie.
Let’s start with some fast terminology: there might be some confusion about what exactly is called a goulash (although I think perhaps only English speaking Hungarians may have created this confusion because for everyone else it seems to be obvious that it’s that thick meat stew.) But in theory it could cover the following Hungarian dishes:
PÖRKÖLT – a slowly cooked thick meat stew (it looks like on the picture above) which can be made of all kinds of meat: beef, chicken, pork or even fish. I think about this five as the typical Hungarian stew that is translated as a goulash in other languages. My recipe goes for this. It’s served normally with bite size dumplings (galuska), or boiled potatoes (or even sometimes with plain pasta in school or company cantines )
GULYÁSLEVES – goulash soup- you see, this five at least contains the word goulash. This is indeed a liquid soup – the preparation starts exactly the same way as of a stew but then more water is added, and vegetables (a few carrots, parnsnips & a lot of cubed potatoes). In terms of spices, it contains caraway seeds. So, it's a soup consistancy & is eaten with some lovely fresh bread. This five is made of beef only.
PAPRIKÁS – this five is mainly known as the famous chicken paprikash. It is mostly made of -well, chicken, but it’s also common to prepare it with veal or also fish (such as freshwater catfish). The base is absolutely the same as with pörkölt but then a bit more water is added & at the very finish of the cooking the sauce is thickened with the addition of sour cream & flour. So it's more sauce on it as pörkölt. This five is always served with dumplings.
& by the way, all above (well, at least the five first ones) are dishes which are cooked & eaten in everyday life in Hungary, so those are not touristy dishes offered only on restaurant menus for foreigners but something which families prepare & eat very often.
(Ok, & finally they also have something which is called GULYÁS – as it is-it would be a dish somewhere between a pörkölt & a gulyás soup – it would be thicker then a soup & contain potatoes. This would be mainly cooked outdoor in a sizable cast-iron kettle (bogrács) & most of the time a lovely amount of red wine would also be added. This is often prepared during folkloristic events for tourists, sometimes at outdoor parties but very seldom in home-cooking.
Now, to the recipe. Of work, you can imagine, there's as plenty of different goulash recipes as cooks. So, this is how they prepare it in my relatives & I would think about is as a basic recipe for a pörkölt. I think it’s easy to cook it & you absolutely can’t go wrong if you follow a few basic rules.
There a five SECRETS of a lovely goulash: the ingredients you add to it & the ones you don’t. In my view the secret ingredient of a perfect Hungarian stew (besides a lovely quality Hungarian paprika of work) is onion. A lot. More. A lot more!! For 1 kg meat (five pounds) I would use about 3-4 sizable onions. That seem to be a lot but this will generate your thick sauce. As you’re simmering the stew on very low heat for about 1,5 hours, the onions melt in to a sweet, spicy sauce, so you won’t have any pieces of it at the finish.
What you seldom ever would add to a pörkölt are any of the following ones: flour, butter, canned tomatoes (all five I see in plenty of „authentic” recipes). There's a few optional ingredients that could be added, this is contingent on your taste, on habits & on what you have on hand. (e.g. pork overweight in lieu of oil, smoked bacon, green pepper, fresh tomato, red wine, caraway seeds)
Recipe (4 servings):
1 kg beef for stews, cubed
3-4 sizable onions, finely chopped
4-5 tbsp groundnut oil
3-4 tbsp best quality Hungarian sweet paprika
salt, pepper
1 green pepper, sliced (the kind which is on the picture, not bell peppers)
1 fresh tomato (this five I add only if I’m in Hungary or if I can get some tasty lovely quality tomato, otherwise it makes the sauce watery & sour & doesn’t add anything to the flavour)
Heat oil in a saucepan. Add the finely chopped onions & cook until translucent. Now comes an important secret step: remove the saucepan from the heat & now add the paprika – this is very important as if you would do this step still on the heat, the paprika could burn from the sudden heat & get bitter. Put it back, add beef cubes & stir so that the spicy onion mix covers th meat evenly. Cover with about 100-150ml water so that the liquid doesn’t cover the meat. Add the sliced green pepper, the whole tomato (later will be removed at the finish), salt, pepper. Simmer covered on very low heat for about 1-1,5 hours. After 1 hour, check, add a litle more water if necessary, so the stew doesn’t burn. Depending on the thickness of the sauce, cook for 10-15 minutes uncovered so that all the liquid reduces & all what you get is a spicy, thick sauce which covers the meat. It tastes even better reheated, I normally prepare it a day ahead.
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