Goulash

It's all about comfort

If I were ever on MasterChef (heaven forbid—I can’t think that quickly, or style that beautifully – you only need to see these photos to understand that), and they asked me to cook a dish that reminded me of my childhood, I’d make goulash.

Not this one, though.

The one that takes me back is my mum’s goulash—or, more accurately, Aunty Doll’s goulash.

Doll wasn’t her real name; it was Rita. I’ve no idea how Rita became Dolly. She was my Nan’s sister and, after WWII, married an American serviceman. When she eventually returned to Australia (with two children and minus the serviceman), she brought this recipe with her.

It’s made with minced beef (ground beef if you’re in the US), onion and garlic, a little paprika, tomatoes of some description—soup, tinned or crushed—and cooked pasta, usually macaroni or egg noodles. Everything is layered into a baking dish, topped generously with cheese and baked until golden and bubbling. It’s delicious.

Whenever I’m in Sydney and Mum makes Grandma Goulash for dinner, it still feels like a special treat. It’s comfort food in the truest sense, and now the grandkids love it too. If you’re interested, I’ll share that recipe next week.

For years I assumed that was what everyone meant when they talked about goulash—until our first trip to Europe in 1995.

We were on one of those twenty-one-day Trafalgar coach tours (”It’s Monday, so we must be in Austria”) and stopped at a service centre somewhere between Vienna and Salzburg for lunch. I ordered goulash soup.

What arrived was nothing like I’d expected: chunks of slow-cooked beef in a rich, paprika-scented broth, topped with sour cream and served with bread. It was more stew than soup, and it was a revelation.

For the rest of the trip, I ordered goulash whenever I saw it. Sometimes it was soupier, sometimes thicker. Sometimes it contained potatoes and carrots, sometimes red capsicum and tomatoes, sometimes neither. Every bowl was a little different.

Hungarian goulash began as a simple soup eaten by cattle herders (the word gulyás literally refers to a herdsman), but these days it’s generally thought of as a paprika-rich stew, sitting somewhere along the soup-to-stew spectrum.

Because it’s cooked low and slow, you want a cut of beef that becomes meltingly tender. Beef shin is ideal, but chuck, gravy beef or whatever your butcher labels as stewing beef will all work beautifully. Save the rump steak for another day.

Some recipes include carrots, potatoes or mushrooms. Others leave out the capsicum or tomatoes. I like mine with both peppers and tomatoes, but without the extra vegetables.

Paprika is the star here—and don’t be shy with it. Caraway seeds, if you can find them, add a subtle sweet, earthy note that makes all the difference. Other than salt and pepper, I usually throw in a couple of bay leaves—rescued from the locusts that stripped my lemon tree bare and left my bay tree looking decidedly sorry for itself over summer. Both are coming back now.

A squeeze of lemon juice at the end brightens everything and balances the sweetness of the paprika.

We serve ours with a generous dollop of sour cream on top rather than stirred through, and I’d normally finish it with chopped parsley. Unfortunately, between the locusts and my parsley bolting to seed—and me forgetting to buy any—you’ll just have to imagine the greenery.

As for accompaniments? Spätzle, dumplings, pasta or potatoes – mashed or boiled – will do the trick. And if you want to turn it into a soup? Just add another couple of cups of stock. Easy peasy.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the recipe.

Goulash

What you need …

• 2 tbsp oil

• 1kg (or thereabouts) shin or gravy beef, trimmed, cut into 3cm cubes

• 2 large brown onions, sliced into half moons

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• 2 large red or green capsicums, cut into 2cm pieces

• 2 tbsp plain flour

• 3 tbsp sweet paprika

• 1 tsp caraway seeds (ground)

• 1 tsp salt (or to taste)

• 1 tsp pepper (or to taste)

• 2 bay leaves

• 2 cups beef stock

• 400g can chopped tomatoes or a 400ml bottle of tomato passata – whatever you have in the pantry

• juice of a lemon

• sour cream to serve

• Cooked egg noodles, spaetzle or potatoes (boiled or mashed – your call) to serve

• Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (or chives), to serve

What you do with it…

Preheat the oven to 140C

Mix together the paprika, salt and pepper, caraway seeds and flour into a large bowl and tip in the beef, tossing it about until it’s evenly coated. I think clean hands are the best tool for this job.

Heat the oil in a heavy-based oven-proof casserole dish over a medium-high heat, and then brown the meat in batches, being very careful not to crowd the pan. Remove when golden and crusted, and set aside.

Scrape the bottom of the pan and add the onions, adding a little more oil if necessary. Cook until soft and starting to brown, then stir the flour and spice mixture from the bottom of the bowl, leftover from the beef, into the onions and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Tip the beef back into the pan and add the stock and tomato. Scrape the bottom of the pan again, stir through a couple of bay leaves, then put in the oven for 2.5 hours.

Stir the peppers and lemon juice into the goulash and cook for another half hour, or until the meat is very tender – you can remove the lid to let the sauce reduce if you like it stewier rather than soupier. Check the seasoning and serve with sour cream, your carb of choice and the parsley you remembered to buy.

Jude English, the protagonist of my new novel, Second Chance Kitchen at Mannus Ridge, is writing a country-comfort-style cookbook. This means I’ll also be cooking my favourite country comforts … and maybe, even yours… Hit me up with your favourites…