Gary Rhodes Goulash

Bambi2

:pac:Hey all,
I am currently without my Gary Rhodes cookbook (having lent it to an undependable type and was wondering if anyone has got his recipe for beef goulash! I've promised to make goulash for a New Year's Day party and forgot about the absence of the book!!

Or has anyone got a nice, hearty goulash recipe, pretty please?!

Little Alex

I guess you've already got it sorted, but I'm replying to this as I made goulash this evening for dinner.

Allow me to waffle (:)) on for a little on this one as I've been to Budapest a few times and our Hungarian hosts made this regularly. As regards the recipe, there is no definitive one. There are many regional variations within Hungary itself and it is also very popular in other surrounding countries where they, too, make it slightly differently. You can also add stuff (within reason) as this is a stew and is sometimes made with whatever happens to be to hand.

This is how it was made (this would be enough for 4 to 6 people, I would say):

1 large onion, finely chopped
Several garlic cloves, finely chopped
Paprika powder ("sweet" or hot, whatever your preference is)
1 red and 1 green pepper, cut into squares
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 litre stock (homemade if possible, failing that, water)
1 cup red wine
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
400g diced beef
4 good sized potatoes, peeled and cut into bitesize pieces

Fry the onion and garlic in butter or oil at a lowish temperature until tender. Add the paprika powder - a couple of teaspoons - and stir it in. The beef is now added and fried until browned.

The liquid ingredients are added: wine, stock and chopped tomatoes and the pot is left to simmer for a half an hour or so. Then add the carrots and and leave it to simmer for a while longer, until you are happy with the tenderness of them and the beef.

When just about done add the peppers and potatoes and wait until the potatoes are cooked, which should be a further 20 minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

I also added a can of cannelini beans (an "allowed" addition) just before serving. They're already cooked and just need to be heated through.

Ladle into a bowl and finish with some sour cream. You could also sprinkle with fresh, chopped parsley.

---

A change I made was just before adding the carrots I removed the beef and gave the liquid a good blending. This made it really smooth and the liquidised onion thickened it nicely. After that I put the beef back in and proceeded.

Here is the result:

Magic Monkey

Little Alex wrote: »

You can also add stuff (within reason) as this is a stew and is sometimes made with whatever happens to be to hand.

Goulash, or gulyásleves is commonly mistaken for a stew, when it is, in fact, a soup. "Gulyás" means "herdsman" and "leves" means "soup" in Hungarian. There's more info available here. What people mistake Goulash for is actually what's known in hungarian as a pörkölt. In fact, they have 3 main types of stew:

1) Pörkölt - made from beef ideally, or poultry, pork, mutton or venison. The meat is cubed. Uses a fat/onion/ground paprika base.
2) Paprikás - made from lean meat, ideally chicken, otherwise veal or rabbit. The meat is cubed if possible. Uses a fat/onion/ground paprika base, but less paprika than a pörkölt. Finished with sour cream.
3) Tokány - made from beef, mutton or venison. The meat is cut into short, thin strips. Uses fat/onion, no ground paprika. Instead it can use black pepper and marjoram.

Here's a Goulash recipe from Szakácskönyv by Horváth Ilona, which is the classic hungarian cookbook:

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp oil or 30g pork fat
300g beef or pork, 2cm cubes
150g soup vegetables (2/3 carrot, 1/3 parsley root - if unavailable, omit)
500g potatoes, cubed
1 medium onion, very finely diced
Salt
Ground paprika
Ground white pepper
Ground cumin or small bay leaf
1 whole pepper

Method:
1) Sweat the onion in the fat under a lid. Add the meat, and brown a little.
2) Move pot off the heat. Add the ground paprika, salt, white pepper, and cumin or bay leaf, all according to taste. Mix through, then add water to cover. Add the whole pepper. Simmer, covered.
3) When meat is 1/2 way cooked, add the vegetables. Kohlrabi can be added, as well as some whole celery (but should be removed before serving.)
4) When soup is almost finished, add the potatoes, turn heat to low, and cook until done.

Possum66

I have never, ever though in my life, that I will see Horváth Ilona's name to be mentioned on an Irish cookery forum!

That book is my Bible. My mom gave it to me as a wedding present :-)

Yes, it is a soup... rich and filling, but it is a soup. Beans? Well... not in my household, anyway. A nice slice of homemade bread to soak up the liquid!

Oh, and I am a Hungarian.

But you can vary it as you want, it is your choice. Enjoy!

Magic Monkey

It's the best authentic book I've found for Hungarian cooking, despite not being widely available in English. Konemann have a decent book, but not all the recipes work, or seem to be truly authentic compared to Horváth's. Beans, especially cannelini, are great in a bableves (bean soup). Jó étvágyat!

Little Alex

Thank you both for the additions.

I need to check a couple of things out and then I'll get back to you... didn't know that I was entering into such controversy here.

Egészségedre!

Possum66

Egészségetekre!

Mrs Fox

I got a recipe from a dear Hungarian friend, and altered a little to my taste...

2lbs stewing beef cubed
3 cloves garlic (I personally added this, but authentic gulyasleves doesn't contain garlic)
2 onions diced
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp flour
3 potatoes cubed
3 carrots cubed
2 tbsp Hungarian paprika
2 tbsp caraway seeds (I picked this up from a recipe from the net)
enough beef stock to cover the meat
salt to taste


Coat the beef with flour.
Heat up oil in a casserole on high heat.
Throw in the coated beef & brown. Scoop & put aside.
Turn down the heat to medium and add onion & scrape the bits from the browning meat in pot, stirring occasionally until transluscent.
Add garlic, is using and stir for a bit.
Add caraway seeds & stir until fragrant.
Take the pot off the heat. Then add the paprika. This is to avoid the paprika from burning and bitter the dish.
Add the browned meat and stir. Put it back to heat. Stir stir stir.
Pour in the stock enough to cover the meat completely.
Add potatoes & carrots.
Let it simmer for about an hour and half over low heat, and meat is very2 tender.
Season if needed.

Tadaaaaaa....

Mrs Fox

My friend also mentioned the use of piras arany (spelling?) but another hungarian friend said it was a no no in an authentic gulyasleves. Again, it's to everyone's taste at the end of the day.

Possum66

belacan wrote: »

My friend also mentioned the use of piras arany (spelling?) but another hungarian friend said it was a no no in an authentic gulyasleves. Again, it's to everyone's taste at the end of the day.

Oh yes, good old Piros Arany (literally: Red Gold). Yes, it is a no-no by purists, as it is very salty, quite full of preservatives, and it can seriously mess up the saltiness and taste of your soup. And it is in a tube, like a toothpaste, so its pepper content and freshness sometimes can be quite dodgy.

But if you are looking for another alternative, there is another product (available from the Hungarian store), much better, and it is called "Erős Pista" (= Strong Steve, haha), which is nothing else but fresh hot pepper, minced, a touch of salt... It is very hot, but there is a mild version, "Édes Anna" (= Sweet Anne"), which gives you a nice taste, and nice colour.

But generally the gulyás gets its colour from the sweet ground paprika...

I remember when I was looking for the Irish Stew recipe on the net and in my cookery books... the different versions I had found :-)

But to be honest in this weather I prefer the bean soup "Jókai-style". It is a rich, thick bean soup, full of nice veggies, and you boil the soup with a hamhock in it... The taste...! Dunnes has cooked hamhocks for 2.49 - you can easily feed a family with a pot of soup...

Little Alex

I rooted out the two books that I have. One is the Culinaria book mentioned by Magic Monkey and the other is a small book with 40 or so recipes by Boldizsar and Mary Hovath... could they be related to Ilona Hovath or is it a common surname?

Anyway, I know the beans aren't part of the standard deal (that's why i didn't include them in the list of ingredients), but I like to add a tin of them anyway. The guy who brought the ingeredients had a garden plot where the grew everything himself - peppers, tomatoes, beanstalks, etc - and so everything was used. I've never seen anything like it before, he was that organised and self sufficient. I was seriously in awe. He also brought a huge jar of sun-pickled cucumbers and made pasta (similar to German Spätzle) with the thing (sorry, don't know the names here) that looks like a mandolin grater with a paint scraper. Oh yeah, and Tokay in a 2-litre Coca Cola bottle that was filled from a cask by the wine maker.

By the way, I don't think the OP has been back since!

Magic Monkey

I have that Boldiszar/Horváth book too, "Classical Hungarian Sweets and Cakes" - it's quite good, there are some small errors and omissions on a few recipes, but overall it seems to cover everything you'd find in a hungarian cukrászda, and the pictures are great. The chocolate chestnut cake recipe in it is really good.

I know what you mean about the self-sufficiency, nothing is wasted there. Root vegetables are stored in sand over the winter, peppers are dried for making paprika, cucumbers/peppers are pickled, meat is cured and dried, and almost every family will have a larder/pantry in their home. The spätzle-like pasta is called nokedli. Galuska is the official name, but no-one seems to call it that, and as far as I know, csipetke are only used in soups as small dumplings, as opposed to as a side dish.

And yeah, think we've scared the OP away :P

carbsy

Little Alex wrote: »

I guess you've already got it sorted, but I'm replying to this as I made goulash this evening for dinner.

Allow me to waffle (:)) on for a little on this one as I've been to Budapest a few times and our Hungarian hosts made this regularly. As regards the recipe, there is no definitive one. There are many regional variations within Hungary itself and it is also very popular in other surrounding countries where they, too, make it slightly differently. You can also add stuff (within reason) as this is a stew and is sometimes made with whatever happens to be to hand.

This is how it was made (this would be enough for 4 to 6 people, I would say):

1 large onion, finely chopped
Several garlic cloves, finely chopped
Paprika powder ("sweet" or hot, whatever your preference is)
1 red and 1 green pepper, cut into squares
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 litre stock (homemade if possible, failing that, water)
1 cup red wine
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
400g diced beef
4 good sized potatoes, peeled and cut into bitesize pieces

Fry the onion and garlic in butter or oil at a lowish temperature until tender. Add the paprika powder - a couple of teaspoons - and stir it in. The beef is now added and fried until browned.

The liquid ingredients are added: wine, stock and chopped tomatoes and the pot is left to simmer for a half an hour or so. Then add the carrots and and leave it to simmer for a while longer, until you are happy with the tenderness of them and the beef.

When just about done add the peppers and potatoes and wait until the potatoes are cooked, which should be a further 20 minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper.

I also added a can of cannelini beans (an "allowed" addition) just before serving. They're already cooked and just need to be heated through.

Ladle into a bowl and finish with some sour cream. You could also sprinkle with fresh, chopped parsley.

---

A change I made was just before adding the carrots I removed the beef and gave the liquid a good blending. This made it really smooth and the liquidised onion thickened it nicely. After that I put the beef back in and proceeded.

Here is the result:

I'm in the process of making this now! I'll let you know how I get on.

P.S. I've had the real deal in Budapest too so let's see how this turns out....