Sweater weather is officially here – let’s get cosy with Goulash! This Hungarian recipe is a slow cooked beef soup or stew that’s boldly flavoured with stacks of paprika which makes the sauce a deep, vibrant red colour. Think traditional beef stew – with extra character!
Goulash
If you think Hungary and think hearty food, then Goulash is probably exactly what comes to mind. Unsurprising given it is Hungary’s greatest food export!
Is it a stew? Is it a soup? It sort of lies between the two in terms of the amount of broth vs the stuff in it. Though one noticeable thing about traditional Goulash is that the broth is thinner than what you think of with stews, and it’s not thickened with flour or cream. Also, it’s not typically served over mash like stews, it’s served in bowls like soup.
As for flavour, I describe it as a beef stew with a sauce that reminds me of chorizo flavours thanks to a big hit of paprika and savouriness from a good amount of garlic, capsicum (bell peppers) and onion. It’s really, really good. Bolder than typical beef stew!
Note on authenticity: This is a recipe that is intended to respect traditional Hungarian Goulash. But as with all such recipes, every cook and every family has their own version. I am sure some Hungarians will disagree on something I’ve included! Please share your thoughts below but know that I did do my research!
Ingredients in Hungarian Goulash
Two things you’ll observe when you make this:
A LOT of paprika. Flavour and sauce colour!
A LOT of vegetables. 2 each onions, capsicum/bell peppers, carrots, tomato, potatoes. Flavour and heartiness!
Beef, spices and sauce
Beef – The classic beef cut to use is beef chuck which is a tough cut of meat that becomes meltingly tender when slow cooked. If you can, get a single piece so you can cut it into cubes of the size we want, else get a thick steak. Always look for beef that is nicely marbled with fat. All too often, the grocery stores ones are disturbingly lean. We want the fat marbled throughout, it makes the beef so tender and juicy!
Substitute – Beef osso bucco (boneless) and beef cheeks. The meat cubes will twist and buckle more once cooked but these are actually juicier than chuck. Gravy beef and brisket will also work but meat is a little leaner.
Paprika – Use Hungarian or Hungarian-style if you can, the paprika is smoother and sweeter than ordinary paprika. Don’t use hot paprika – we’re using lots of paprika here, it will be way too spicy! Smoked paprika will make the sauce a little too smokey, though you could mix-and-match a little if you want.
Caraway seeds – A traditional spice used in Goulash used in central European cooking. Not the end of the world if you don’t have it but you’ll love the little unique pops of flavour if you do!
Beef stock/broth – The liquid used to make the sauce. Traditionally water was used, but no one can deny that using stock makes the sauce a whole lot tastier! I personally would not make this with water. If you use homemade beef stock, you could sell bowls of this for a pretty penny.
Butter and oil – The fat for sautéing. I like to use both so you get the best of both worlds – butter for flavour, oil for effective searing (butter is ~15% water and susceptible to burning at high heats).
Bay leaf – For flavour. Fresh if you can, or dried (pictured).
We don’t need flour to thicken the sauce – see next paragraph.
The vegetables
Some recipes use flour to thicken the sauce. I don’t find that necessary if you use fresh tomatoes rather than canned tomatoes, as they break down to thicken the sauce. It also makes the stew sauce taste less tomatoey which lets the paprika and other flavours come through more.
Onion and garlic – flavour base.
Capsicum/bell peppers – One each red and yellow if you can, or 2 red. Don’t underestimate the flavour this brings to the sauce! You can substitute the potato and carrot but don’t skip capsicum!
Tomatoes – These break down to naturally thicken the sauce rather than using flour.
Carrot and potato – Vegetable adds ins that fills it out. Feel free to switch with other root vegetables such as celeriac, parsnip, or even non-root vegetables like green beans. Note: These get added at the end of the cook time so the potato doesn’t disintegrate.
Parsley – optional garnish
How to make Goulash
Usually, stews will call for beef cubes to be browned first, removed, then added back into the pot after sautéing the vegetables. Goulash goes all in. I doubted it at first but when I saw it go all stewy and the flavours mingling together before I even got to the slow cooking part, I understood.
And when I tasted the finished dish, it sealed the deal!
Cut beef into nice size chunks then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Cook onion first for 6 minutes until the edges are light golden.
Cook beef – Next, add the beef all in one go and stir until the surfaces changes from red to brown. You won’t be browning on the beef because there’s too much in the pot and that’s just how it’s supposed to be. All the flavours meld and come together in the next steps!
Add garlic, capsicum and tomato. Stir for 3 minutes to coat the vegetables in all the flavour in the pot. The tomato will mostly breakdown – it will break down completing during the slow cooking phase and thicken the sauce.
Spices – Add paprika, caraway and bay leaf. Stir for 30 seconds to coat everything in the tasty flavours.
Simmer – Add beef stock, stir, bring to simmer.
Slow cook – Cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for 1 1/2 hours. At this stage the beef should be pretty tender but not quite “fall-apart”, there’s still another 30 minutes to go. Stir in carrot and potatoes then cook for another 30 minutes. By this time, the potatoes (if you cut them the exact size I specify!!) should be soft and the beef should be “fall-apart”.
Serve – Sprinkle with parsley if you’re feeling fancy then ladle into bowls!
That’s Friday’s cheese bread pictured above, being dunked into the Goulash. Though you could do ordinary crusty Artisan bread. Both are no-knead, no stand-mixer, 3 minute dough making situations. Not mandatory…..but any kind of bread elevates soup-stew eating experiences, right??! – Nagi x
PS One final point – as with any stewy / slow-cooked recipes, Goulash tastes even better the next day. Completely and utterly company-worthy.
Watch how to make it
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Goulash (Hungarian beef stew)
Ingredients
- 1 kg/2 lb beef chuck , cut in 3.5cm / 1.5″ cubes (Note 1)
- 1 3/4 tsp cooking salt / kosher salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp/ 30g unsalted butter
- 2 brown onions , cut into 1cm / 1/2″ squares
- 5 garlic cloves , finely minced
- 2 capsicum/bell peppers (1 red + 1 yellow), cut into 2 cm / 0.8″ squares
- 2 tomatoes , cut into 8 wedges then in half
- 1/4 cup Hungarian-style paprika (sub ordinary paprika, Note 2)
- 1 tsp caraway seeds , optional (Note 3)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 litre / 4 cups beef stock/broth , low-sodium
- 2 carrots , peeled, cut in quarters lengthwise then into 1cm / 0.4″ pieces
- 2 potatoes , cut into 1.2cm / 1/2″ cubes
- 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley , optional garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan), though you can use your slow cooker or stove instead (oven easiest! Note 4).
- Season beef – Toss the beef with half the salt and pepper.
- Cook onion – Heat the oil and melt the butter in a large oven-proof dutch oven over high heat. Cook onion for 6 minutes until the edges are light golden.
- Cook beef – Add the beef and stir until the outside changes from red to brown, about 2 minutes. It won't go golden brown, it's not supposed to.
- Add vegetables – Add garlic, capsicum and tomato. Stir for 3 minutes – the tomato will mostly breakdown.
- Add paprika, caraway and bay leaf. Stir for 30 seconds.
- Slow cook – Add beef stock, stir, bring to simmer. Cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for 1 1/2 hours.
- Add potato – The beef should be pretty tender but not quite "fall-apart". Stir in carrot and potatoes. Return to oven, covered, for another 30 minutes. Beef should now be "fall-apart" – if not, return to the oven for 10 minutes at a time.
- Serve – Ladle goulash into bowls and sprinkle with parsley. Eat as is, with optional bread for dunking! (Pictured with cheese bread)
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Life of Dozer
Office bathroom. Now doubles as Dozer’s playroom. Staff who walked into this had a good laugh!!
I love this recipe. It is so good.
Today i fought with myself as i am trying to reduce the red meat in our diet. I used the same ingredients except I substituted brown lentils for the meat, added all the vegetables after frying the onion and the paprika, added some extra water and a little Bonox. And cooked it for 45 minutes. It wasn’t Goulash (more’s the pity), but it was a very good lentil soup.
Hello Nagi, In the last four years I have baked and I have prepared many meals for my disabled sister who can longer cook. She can tell which spices I have used and why I should use more or less of each spice. She can tell me what I have done wrong or what I have done right. Her comments on my cooking is always “It’s OK or it’s alright”. I made the Hungarian Goulash last week in a crockpot on a gas range for six hours with the heat very low. It looked as if it needed more but I resisted the urge to add anything. I took a small bowl to my sister across the street being quite sure she would not like it. Of all the many meals I have brought her this is the first time she said ‘This is really good’. From this sister, that is high praise indeed. And I thank you.
Hi, I am Hungarian, sitting here in Hungary and I often cook yr recipes. U are almost the first site where I look for a recipe in case I need. So I was really courious when saw the title…as so many REAL Hungarian goulash recipes are on gapstroblogs in which there is nothing common with the original and this (sorry 😗) can discredit a site in my eyes.
But not this time. As U write, there are some differences, but generally pretty close and kept its substance.
The differences: as French, the Hungarian kitchen uses lard. Pork lard…. I know…. ☺️ I donot use myself, I use rapseed or sunflower oil instead. But pls, not butter as it has diff flavour (nice but not good here
Then use more more soup vegetable nit onlycarrot. Parsley root/parsnip, cellery root or cellery, swede/kohlrabbi. I would use less bell pepper myself. But the main thing: serve it with a special pasta: “csipetke” pinched pasta. Which is one egg+ flour (little salt) wisk together with hand, most be like clay and pich out small pieces of it, dust with flour. When ready put directly to the soup and cook just 1-2 minutes before turning off the stove. U can put chilli directly at serving to plate.
I made this tonight for my Hungarian husband and we absolutely loved this!! Definitely will make it again
Amazing dish! I ate Hungarian Goulash in Budapest, and this one is even better.
You are mixing up the Hungarian Goulash with the Goulash soup. The original Goulash (Hungarian/Austrian) does never contain potatoes or carrots, the goulash soup however does. Two different things. That’s a big faux pas, Nagi! Never call a Goulash a beef-stew, because it’s misleading and downright wrong. The original gulyás was originally a kettle dish, cooked in a bograc.
My mum was Hungarian and she always put carrots and potatoes in the goulash. She also sometimes called it a stew. She also made nokedli (dumplings) for it, which I loved. The point is that every Hungarian household would have have had their own variations. Mum also thickened the sauce with cornflour.
I am Hungaruan and this is nit true. In Austria there is goulash which is a main dish and a kind of meat ragout, this is called pörkölt in Hungary. Both Austrian and Hungarian is only meat main course eaten with some kind of pasta (preferably nokedli/nockerln)
This recipe is really neqr to the original goulash, which is a soup in Hungary (if U say this word everybody here will think of a soup, not the main dish)
As Nagi has noticed, there are differences, but the outcime is pretty close to something which can be called a goulash 😉
Amazing recipe but please take note… you MUST take the pot off the stovetop and then stir the paprika in before returning it to the stovetop. If you don’t, the paprika will turn bitter and your dish won’t taste nice. Nagi – please include this in your notes 🙂
I learned this the hard way! Made the dish a second time because I realised my error and it’s super yummy!
Measurements? Pounds or meat tsp of paprika. Recipe is useless without the measurements
My Hungarian grandmother would call this a variation of her goulash soup. She method was different too. She would start with onions, tomatoes and red capsicum and paprika and allow to simmer covered for 15 minutes. And then add the meat, salt, pepper and additional paprika. The sauce thickens without stock or water. Also Hungarians will add sour cream, but my grandparents were taught the kosher way, no meat and milk together.
Soup required the addition of beef stock, carrot chunks and potato. And Hungarian Egg Pasta Nokedli.
Delicious, no idea why I have never tried Goulash before.
The instructions state to season the beef with half the salt and pepper – but I can’t see anywhere else to add the other half? Am I missing something?
If you watch the video she adds it in after the beef stock is added
I had the same question! According to the video, the rest of the salt and pepper goes in after the beef stock, before the pot goes in the oven for the first time.
Thanks to Jade and Elise for the answer to my question. Makes sense.
My mother was taught goulash by her Hungarian mother-in-law and that wasn’t it. I made it as well. But I’m certain it was delicious as it was yours. Mommy didn’t make everything. Grandma made lots of spicy items which my mother wasn’t fond of. Hot peppers and other vegetables and scrambled eggs.
It’s a great recipe for a Hungarian stew, but it’s not a Hungarian gulyás.
Many charlatans in Hungary pray on the naive people to make s quick buck. They invented the watered down “gulyás soup”. And many opportunistic cooks found very convenient to ‘follow the lead’ and post it as their own trusted recipe.
The history of Gulyás is documented and is not a stew, not a soup. The gulyás is one single identity above the ‘make quick money’ recipe that deserves recognition. You Nagi are a great publisher, but lesson to the people who know what they are telling you and educate you. I can give you happily the real gulyas recipe, just reply yes.
Kind regards from George Rácz who won several traditional gulyás challenges.
Please send the real Hungarian gulyas recipe to me. I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much. Ed
yes, please, recipe would be extremely welcome.
I’d love your recipe please! =) also making this one of Nagis tonight as it looks delicious regardless =)
Hi Caitlin, the Gulyas is NOT a soup. The gulyas was cooked in Hungary long before the potatoes were brought in the country cca 200 years ago. It was available only to the weathy families who could afford the beef meat. Most of the population did not have access to meat at all, except for very rare ocasions few times a year. Most important, the gulyas as the name implies, it is made ONLY from beef meat, not any other type of meat. It has NO water added to the cooking of gulyas, there is only the cubed meat, the sliced onion, red long peppers (some people use the hot peppers), Hungarian paprika, salt and ground black pepper. It’s not cheap and these days families tend to stretch the meal adding vegies, potatoes, water. Gulyas word means in Hungarian “made from beef cattle”, so make it with lamb meat sounds rather hilarious. Chicken cattle?? Anyway, there is a gulyas cooking society in Hungary and yearly authentic gulyas cooking competition. There is a literature documented in the history of Hungarian cuisine, the authentic gulyas. It’s really fascinating the evolution of gulyas from hundred years ago until today.
I’m afraid that when I first tasted this I was a little disappointed. It didn’t have a lot of taste, apart from the paprika.
However I had made several meals’ worth, and after the first round I decided to pep it up with a hit of cayenne — not a lot, but enough to give it a real kick. That was exactly what it needed, and with the cayenne it was delicious 😊😊
Made this for my Step-Fathers birthday on Friday night. He’s all about anything with lots of sauce / gravy. Utterly divine. Thank you again Nagi
Another winner, thanks Nagi! Served with sour cream and loved it! We ate half tonight and will freeze the rest for our winter camping dinner 🙂
For Slow cooker it says – 6 hours on low, add potato and carrot, 2 hours on low. Does this mean you you add potato and carrot after 4 hours IE 2 hours before the end?
Tony, I cooked this in a crockpot on a gas range at very low for 6 hours total. I added the carrots and potatoes for the last two hours. The stew was eaten as a stew and most of the rich liquid I used for another meal.
I would read it as 6 hours on low then add potato and carrot then another 2 hrs on low
I believe it means 8 hours total. 6 hours on low + another 2 hours after adding the carrots and potatoes.
I tried this recipe tonight, and it’s absolutely delicious 😋
Made this for dinner this past weekend. OMG! Sooo good.
I grew up in a family that was fairly poor. My mother would make (Southern) goulash with ground beef. Couldn’t afford the beef chuck, which I DID use this time.
She also added corn and macaroni noodles to stretch it. So, yes I added those as well, but otherwise followed your recipe. Another total “go to”. Couldn’t stop eating it. Such wonderful tastes and such great memories. Thanks, thanks, thanks.
Hugs from me and wet nose kisses from, my Sarjah (ASD rescue.)