Goulash

Ingredients

• Beef shin or shoulder — in 3 cm cubes1 kg
• Onions — finely chopped1 kg
• Sweet paprika3 tbsp
• Caraway seeds1 tsp
• Sweet peppers2
• Tomatoes2
• Potatoes400 g
• Garlic3 clove
• Lard or oil3 tbsp
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Sweat the onion in the lard over a low flame for twenty minutes, until soft and golden. It feels long and pointless, and it is where the sweetness of the sauce comes from.

   20 min

2. 2

   Take the pan off the heat, add the paprika and caraway and stir. Half a minute later return it to the flame and add the meat.

   3 min

3. 3

   Cook the meat with the onion covered for half an hour without adding water: it gives up its own. Only then pour in water to the level of the meat.

   30 min

4. 4

   Simmer for an hour and a half. Add the peppers, tomatoes and garlic forty minutes before the end, the potatoes twenty-five.

   90 min

5. 5

   Salt it at the very end and let it stand fifteen minutes before serving.

   15 min

About the dish

A real goulash is thickened by onion, not flour. There is as much onion as meat; over two hours it breaks down completely, and that is what gives the sauce its body.

The paprika goes into a pan already off the heat. Above about a hundred and sixty degrees it burns within seconds and turns bitter — this is the mistake made most often.

In Hungary goulash is a soup, and what the rest of the world calls goulash is called pörkölt there. This version sits closer to the thick soup eaten at home.

Worth knowing

• — The paprika has to be fresh. It loses both colour and flavour within a year, and old paprika gives a brown soup instead of a red one.
• — Shin beats a prime cut: over two hours the connective tissue turns to gelatine and gives the sauce its body.
• — If the sauce comes out thin, mash a couple of the potatoes in the pot. Flour is not wanted here.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

32 g

More from Hungary

• Lángos — A yeasted flatbread deep-fried, rubbed with garlic and buried under soured cream and cheese.