Hungary’s indispensable classic: goulash

Goulash, Hungary’s best-known comfort dish, sits somewhere between a soup and a stew. It combines large cubes of beef with plenty of onions, sweet Hungarian paprika, caraway, potatoes and carrots, then serves the rich mixture with small pieces of homemade Csipetke dough.

The dish is traditionally associated with Hungarian shepherds, or gulyás, who cooked it in cast-iron cauldrons over fires on the plains. Its character comes less from a flour or starch thickener than from onions slowly caramelized in fat, which bind the sauce as they soften. Good-quality sweet paprika gives the meat its striking red color.

The recipe calls for 600 grams of beef round or shoulder, three large onions, garlic, paprika, caraway, a sweet pepper, a ripe tomato and 1.5 liters of stock or water. The meat cooks gently with the onion mixture before carrots and potatoes join the pot for the final stage.

Csipetke is made by kneading an egg with flour and salt into a firm dough. Small pieces are pinched off and dropped into the simmering goulash, where they cook for about five minutes until they rise to the surface.