Hungarian Goulash (Madarsk Gul )

Ingredients: 2lbs beef chuck (cubed), 1 green and 1 red large bell pepper, 3 tom
atoes, scallions (or leeks or onions), 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of tomat
o paste, paprika, red pepper, ground black pepper, salt, caraway (ground is bett
er), marjoram
Prep Time: Only about 20 minutes to get everything going, but some 3 hours for s
tewing .
Heat up oil (olej) in a large frying pan. Then slowly add the meat (mso). The oil
may splatter so be careful. Brown on all sides. This will take 5 to 10 minutes.
Meat is browned before cooking to create a hard shell to keep the juices in. I
am not sure why meat is also browned before stewing. Perhaps it helps keep the c
hunks together.
Next remove the meat, leaving behind the brewing sauce. In the next step, you wi
ll add various seasonings, including garlic (cesnak). One trick I learned from m
y grandma is that there is no need to peel garlic. Simply take an unpeeled clove
, and mince it using a food grater. The hard shell will stay behind!
Now add your chopped up veggies (zelenina) and brown them for a bit. Don t forget
to add the spices: minced garlic, caraway (rasca, ground is better, but I used w
hole), salt (sol), ground black pepper (mlet cierne korenie), paprika (Hungarian
dish without paprika? Impossible!) and a spoonful of tomato paste (paradajkov pre
tlak). Then the final spice: hot pepper ( tiplav paprika). When adding red pepper,
remember that the concentration will increase as the water content evaporates. P
ut the meat back in and add enough water (voda) to cover it. Feel free to move e
verything to a bigger pot if you need to, as I did. Reduce the heat once the wat
er starts to boil.
Cover and wait. And wait. It will take about 3 hours for the meat to soften. I s
pent this time watching Julie & Julia. Great movie, just to bad Julia Powell dec
ided to write her follow up book outlining (in gory detail according to reviews
on Amazon) her various affairs and infidelities. Quite a different image of her
marriage than the movie portrayed. In the last hour or so, I moved the lid sligh
tly to a side to allow the steam escape. This helped thicken the sauce. The resu
lting sauce should be pretty thick about one second gap thick. This means that i
f you run a wooden spoon through it, it will take at least a second for the gap
to close up. Just as the sauce is starting to get ready and the meat is nice and
tender, add some marjoram (majorm).