Goulash: the reddest of all stews

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Hungarian goulash is one of those dishes for which there are many different traditional versions. Therefore, any way you make it on the internet is guaranteed to make someone angry. This is not traditional goulash. This is just me reading a hundred different modern and historical recipes and synthesizing my favorite ideas into a single thing. Internationally at least, goulash usually means a beef stew or soup cooked with a lot of paprika and often other red things like these tomatoes. They could be canned or you could skip them. I’m just giving them a rough preliminary chop. Here’s a red bell pepper, which will build on the paprika flavor. I’m just filleting the meat off the sides of the core. There’s the core. Get rid of it. Here’s an onion. Peel it. Chop it roughly into chunks. Doesn’t matter much. Smash and peel a few cloves of garlic. And then the last thing is a stock of celery. You could skip this. I’m mostly doing it because I want to use the celery leaves later as my fresh herb. Chop all that finely by hand if you want, but I’m using the food processor. I’ll probably need to start off with half of that and then add a little beef broth just to help everything move around in there. Pureeing works better in a wet environment. Whiz that up a little. And now I think I can just put in the rest of it. If you put in too many solids at once, the blades get all gummed up. Whiz that up. You don’t have to get it perfectly smooth. The tiny little chunks will just break down and melt over the long cooking. I like when goulash has a smooth glossy texture on the sauce and the vegetable matter will help thicken it. Put that aside for a sec. Time for the beef. And today I’m using a whole tri tip, which normally people roast, but I think it’s also an underrated stewing cut. Clear grain structure and therefore easy to cut. Lots of chewy collagen that’ll melt into gelatin over long cooking. And lots of intramuscular fat. I want big chunks because they’re going to shrink in half as they cook. This is a little over a kilo, 2 or three lbs, and not the cheapest. Chuck would be cheaper and also good. Short rib would be expensive, but amazing. There, look at that fine marbling of the intramuscular fat. That’s what makes a long cooked piece of meat delicious and moist. Let me get my big pot heating. Refocus the camera. And then I’ll season these chunks heavily with salt and pepper. Get them well smooshed to soak up that seasoning. I’ll probably need to brown these in two batches. A little olive oil. drop them in. And if I were to put all the chunks in at once, the water that they spill out wouldn’t be able to evaporate fast enough, and I’d end up just boiling my meat rather than searing it. I’m trying to get some nice color on as many sides as is convenient. Keeping my heat modest enough that I’m not going to scorch the pan by the time I’m done. I’m lazy. I think I’m just going to pile these over to the apparently cooler side of the pot and finish off the rest right over here. You do not have to brown every surface. I think insisting on maximum browning is toxic optimization culture. A little bit of browning is enough to permeate the entire dish. And you don’t want to scorch the pan because it’ll make the sauce bitter. I’m very close to burning the bottom of my pan. Reduce the heat. Now I can throw in a big squeeze of tomato paste to add some intensity to the tomato flavor. And with it, I will put in a whole big handful of sweet paprika. Ideally, look for high quality stuff from Hungary. It really tastes better. Stir to let that all fry for a second to intensify the flavor. Paprika, of course, is Eastern European chili powder made from specific peppers bred historically in that part of the world. The good stuff gets you more than just that red color. It has a strong sweet pepper aroma. And the sweet kind is basically not hot at all. Time to delaze before everything burns. So, in goes my puree. Use that liquid to dissolve and scrape the brown stuff off the bottom. Check out the color immediately darkening as the heat pops all of the tiny bubbles made by the food processor. Neat. I’ll go ahead and put in the rest of that beef bone broth. I’ll definitely need it. By the way, I’m using Kettle and Fire bone broth, sponsor of this video. It is amazing how various brands of store-bought stock or broth can taste so dramatically different. Here, just heat some up and taste it by itself. You’ll see. Here’s Kettle and Fire. Here’s one of the leading big commercial brands. And you can tell immediately how much more Kettle and Fire extracts from their freerange chicken and grass-fed beef bones. They cook for 14 plus hours, hence the high protein content that you can see and feel on the tongue. It’s velvety and it tastes like real meat and vegetables. This big commercial brand, in contrast, tastes basically like a dehydrated stock cube, artificial and extremely salty. The kettle and fire broth is good enough to just drink as a low calorie snack, which people do. It feels fortifying. Beef or chicken? Get you some. It’ll make all your soups and stews and sauces noticeably better. Try Kettle and Fire today. Get 20% off your order when you use my code Adam20. Just hit my link in the description and order some. Adam 20 at checkout. Thank you, Kettle and Fire. Might as well throw that in. We’ll have lots of evaporation as we simmer until tender for several hours. In the meantime, I’ll crack an egg into a bowl, bead it smooth with a little pinch of salt, and then mix in as much flour as it will absorb. Goulash is sometimes made with chipka, which is a rustic fresh pasta that couldn’t be easier to shape. You’ll see. I’ll start kneading with my hand until this mass soaks up as much flour as it will take, and I can get it reasonably smooth. It will be smoother after the particles hydrate in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. Cover in a damp towel or something so it doesn’t dry out and get a skin. Like 5 hours later, my beef is almost as tender as I want it. I like it almost falling apart, but you could cook it less. Time for my vegetables. I’m just doing carrots today. And I like these thick boys that match the size of the beef pieces. Parsley root would be traditional, too, but it’s not a thing where I live. parsnips, potatoes, cilerak, all would be awesome at this stage. Also, at this stage, I’ll throw in some bay leaves for flavor, assuming that they have any. I think they work better when you don’t boil them super long. The other spice commonly associated with goulash is carowway seeds. The reason I didn’t put them in with the paprika is Lauren hates carowway and she wants to eat this tonight. So, that’s why I’m toasting some until fragrant in this dry pan for a minute. I’ll add those directly to mine at the table. It’ll be a more heterogeneous eating experience, which is my freak thing. Half an hour later, the carrots are tender as I want them. Now, for the dough, it’s a pinched pasta. You just pinch off little chunks straight into the soup. They will shed starch that thickens the soup a little. Whether it counts as a soup or a stew is between you and your god concept. The pasta cooks almost instantly. You’ll see it swell up. That’s why you don’t put in too many or they’ll absorb all of your liquid. Those are so much chewier than dumplings or spetszel. Great texture contrast. And when I find the bay leaves, I’ll take them out so nobody chokes on them. Let’s taste this and see what it needs. Needs a lot more salt. Some of which I will take from Southeast Asian fish sauce. Obviously, not traditional, but it’ll boost the umami. Salt and pepper and maybe some vinegar. And honestly, I think that it could do with a little sugar. Then we’re ready to serve it up. The beautiful color comes from the red stained beef fat that rises to the surface. Delicious. I would never skim that off. You could garnish with sour cream if you’re into that. I’m not. I’m just doing my toasted carowway seeds and celery leaves. Carrots, carowway, celery, parsley root if we had it. These are all members of the aacier family and they’re all flavors that I particularly associate with Eastern Europe. I doubt that’s a coincidence. Delicious, hearty meal. tastes strongly of sweet peppers. And like most brazes, it tastes even better the next day. So make a lot.