Granted it might not be the most suited dish for 34 degrees Celcius, but when you're in the mountains it can get cold and Gulasch Soup is the perfect comfort food for that. An Hungarian special, Gulasch is made with meat, potatoes and paprika powder and usually cooked for hours until everything melts away in your mouth. I remember as a child when we used to drive by car from Germany to Hungary, searching for the perfect "original" Hungarian Gulasch, served in a hanging pot. My mom would want to drive throughout the whole town for it. Unfortunately, as time passed, all the restaurants would stop making it themselves, but simply serve canned supermarket Gulasch (you can tell by the way they served it and the size of the meat chunks). So here is a (not 100% traditional) recipe:
Time: 4/5
Difficulty: 3/5
Ingredients (2-3):
- 500g of beef or pork (preferably some tough meat that can cook for hours like pork butt or the pieces from shoulder, neck or thigh.
- 1:1 same amount of onions and meat
- 1:1 potatoes
- 2 - 3 large carrots
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
optional and not traditional: mushrooms
- 3 Tbsp tomato paste/puree
- 1 Tbsp paprika powder hot
- 1 Tbsp paprika powder sweet
Optional: smoked paprika and bay leafs
- some italian herbs dried
- 250ml dry red wine ( preferably dry red, the ones you will drink after)
- 1 L broth (might not need all of it)
- chives for garnish
Instructions:
Cut the meat into bigger cubes and fry them in oil on all sides in a hot pan. Do so in batches and take them out one after the other. You want it to leave brown spots on the bottom, that's a main flavour component for the soup.
Add butter and the onions and cook until see-through.
Add the tomato puree and fry it a bit so that it will lose a bit of the acidity.
Add the meat back in. Then add the paprika powder mix. Don't fry the powder too long or it will taste bitter.
Add the red wine and let the meat absorb about half, then add a bit of the broth until, everything is barely covered. Add more gradually when the sauce reduces, this way the soup will have a more homogenous and creamy consistency.
Put in the garlic and the additional spices. Then let simmer on low heat for at least 1 1/2 hours.
Add the veggies according to how fast they cook, for example potatoes about 30 min before the end, Bellpeppers about 10min, mushroom 10-20min, carrots 20-30min. This way none of the things will be overcooked.
Serve with sourdough bread or nice mashed potatoes (might leave them out of the soup if you choose this) and garnish with chives.
