EuroFoodTrails
Hungary · Central Europe

Gulyás (Hungarian Goulash)

A soup, not a stew — paprika, beef shin and slow heat.

Gulyás is a Hungarian soup, not the thick brown stew the name usually means outside Hungary. Beef shin, onion and a great deal of paprika are cooked slowly with enough liquid to stay soupy. The paprika goes in off the heat, because it turns bitter if it fries.

160 min Serves 6 easysoupbeefslow-cook

Ingredients

  • 600g beef shin, cubed
  • 2 onions
  • 3 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
  • 2 carrots, 2 potatoes
  • 1 tsp caraway
  • Lard or oil, salt

Method

  1. 1

    Cook the onions slowly in fat until deep gold — 20 minutes, no shortcuts.

  2. 2

    Off the heat, stir in the paprika so it does not burn.

  3. 3

    Add the beef and caraway with 1.5L water; simmer 2 hours.

  4. 4

    Add carrots and potatoes for the last 30 minutes.

  5. 5

    Season and rest before serving.

Budget note

Shin is the cheapest cut and the only right one here.

The Central European table around it

From the guide

The Milk Bar Handbook

Six Central European recipes are free here; the guide holds fourteen, set in the five-country context the recipe pages leave out — menus, venues, bills, receipts, currencies and protected names.

Fourteen Central European recipes, and the menus, bills and labels of five countries.

  • Fourteen Central European recipes with metric and US measures
  • Five-country coverage: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria
  • Menu and venue language, from bar mleczny and hospoda to kifőzde and Beisl
  • Bills, receipts and the five currencies in play
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