Recipe: goulash, the ambassador of Hungarian cuisine – 04/01/2024 – Marcão’s Recipes

There hasn’t been so much talk about Hungary in Brazil since the days of center forward Puskás, in the 1954 World Cup. With a former president using the Hungarian embassy as a guesthouse, one can only imagine what was served to him at the carnival retreat.

When talking about Hungarian food, the first thing that comes to mind is goulash. Goulash, however, is a German word — Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where German was the predominant language.

In Hungary, there is a whole family of more or less similar stews.

Gulyás (where the word “goulash” came from) is a soup of meat, paprika, potatoes, carrots and parsley root. Pörkölt is a thicker mince, usually made from tough cuts of beef or lamb. Paprikás, also refined, contains sour cream and more delicate meats, such as chicken or veal.

In the West, everything has become goulash. The goulash we are going to make is pörkölt.

The most striking flavor of goulash comes from paprika, dried and pulverized peppers. It turns out that there are many varieties of pepper and a series of possible industrial processes, consequently a lot of types of paprika.

All the recipes I researched recommend using Hungarian sweet paprika. You can even buy it in Brazil, but it’s not easy to find. Use regular sweet paprika, avoiding spicy and smoked paprika.

The goulash variants are all rustic dishes, traditionally prepared in a cauldron over an open fire in the countryside, by cowboys. In this context, the fat used is lard. Use oil if you want, but it gets worse.

The base of the meat sauce is onion, lots of onion cooked for a long time until it turns into a sweet cream. A little freshness in this rustic dish comes from fresh marjoram. Fresh oregano substitutes well.

The classic accompaniment to pörkölt, I mean goulash, is galuska, homemade egg pasta. We’ve run out of space here for this recipe, but you’ll be happy with boiled potatoes or buttered pasta.

When serving, a spoonful of sour cream, a fermented cream that is not made industrially in Brazil, goes well. A good workaround is to mix equal parts of cream and natural yogurt.

Hungarian goulash

Performance: 4 servings
Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

• 1 green pepper
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons of lard
• 1 large chopped onion
• 3 crushed garlic cloves
• 500 g of chuck or shoulder cubes
• 3 tablespoons sweet paprika
• 1 teaspoon of ground kümmel or cumin
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• Marjoram and salt to taste

Way of doing

1. Remove the stem, seeds and membranes from the pepper. Blend in a processor with the tomatoes. Reserve.

two. Melt the lard and fry the onion over high heat until transparent. Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute.

3. Add the meat, season with a little salt and sauté until the water evaporates. Add the tomato and pepper mixture and seasonings.

4. Mix, reduce heat and cover the pan. Cook for 2 hours, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Add water whenever it starts to stick to the pan.

5. Serve with sour cream and buttered pasta or boiled potatoes.

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