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Beef Goulash

Name: Beef Goulash
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 110 min
Total time: 135 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Ukrainian
Ingredients: 1200 g Beef chuck, cubed; 400 g Onion; 200 g Carrot; 200 g Red bell pepper; 25 g Sweet smoked paprika; 40 g Tomato paste; 4 piece Garlic cloves; 1 l Beef stock; 25 g Plain flour; 40 ml Sunflower oil; 2 piece Bay leaves; 12 g Fine sea salt; 3 g Ground black pepper; 20 g Flat-leaf parsley

Beef shoulder braised slowly with a great deal of onion and sweet paprika, thickened at the end into a sauce heavy enough to coat a spoon. Ninety minutes of doing nothing, and most of the flavour is made in the first fifteen.

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 110 min
Difficulty: Intermediate

About this dish

Goulash is Hungarian by birth and has been cooked in Ukrainian kitchens long enough to have become something else: less soup than the original gulyás, thicker than a stew, and served over buckwheat, potato or pasta depending on what the house has. What survives the journey is the principle — onion in a weight that alarms people the first time, paprika added off the heat, and a cut of beef that rewards patience rather than punishing it.

Lactose-free
Not vegetarian because of Beef chuck, cubed, Beef stock
Contains gluten because of Plain flour

Ingredients

6servings

1200gBeef chuck, cubed
400gOnion
200gCarrot
200gRed bell pepper
25gSweet smoked paprika
40gTomato paste
4piecesGarlic cloves
1lBeef stock
25gPlain flour
40mlSunflower oil
2piecesBay leaves
12gFine sea salt
3gGround black pepper
20gFlat-leaf parsley

Instructions

Pat the beef dry, season with the salt and brown it hard in the oil in batches, about 12 minutes in all. Set it aside.
12 min
Tip: Dry meat and a crowded pan are the two ways to steam beef instead of browning it. Work in batches even when it is tedious: this crust is the difference between goulash and boiled beef in gravy.
In the same pot, cook the onion, carrot and pepper over medium heat for 10 minutes, until the onion is soft and beginning to colour.
10 min
Tip: The onion here is nearly a third the weight of the meat, and it is meant to be. It breaks down completely over the braise and becomes the body of the sauce; there is no flour doing that job until the very end.
Take the pot off the heat, stir in the paprika, tomato paste and garlic, and let them cook in the residual warmth for a minute.
3 min
Tip: Paprika burns at frying temperature and turns bitter in seconds — irreversibly. Off the heat is not caution, it is the only way this quantity survives.
Return the beef, add the stock, bay and pepper, bring to a bare simmer, cover and cook for 90 minutes, until a fork turns in the meat without effort.
90 min
Tip: A bare simmer, with barely a bubble breaking. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and squeezes out the moisture the long cooking is supposed to be putting back.
Whisk the flour with a ladle of the hot liquid until smooth, stir it back into the pot and simmer 10 minutes more. Finish with the parsley.
10 min
Tip: Tempering the flour in hot liquid first is what prevents lumps; flour added dry to a full pot will find every way to clump and none to disperse.