I cooked up another of our three-night meals on Wednesday, starting with a kilogram of pork and eight potatoes and finishing with my take on goulash.
Now, before anyone takes me to task I do know that true gulyás is a soup of beef, onions, red peppers, and paprika.
I, on the other hand, do not have any beef, did have an abundance of potatoes, had only half a red pepper and a slightly manky green pepper.
The result was still delicious, if somewhat less than traditional.
Stonehead’s Goulash
Ingredients
- 1kg boned pork shoulder, skinned and diced
- 2 tbsp paprika (Hungarian would be best, Spanish is fine or you can just use what you have in the cupboard —as I did)
- Salt and pepper
- 2 tbsp lard (the rendered fat from the pork skin; the skin itself made excellent scratchings)
- 2 large white onions, peeled and sliced
- 1/2 red pepper, cored and diced
- 1 green pepper, cored and diced (use two red peppers if possible)
- 8 potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 litres of hot water
- 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Method
- Place the paprika, salt and pepper in a plastic bag or tub with the diced pork and shake vigorously until the meat is well seasoned.
- Melt the lard in a large pan over a medium heat, then brown the seasoned meat in batches.
- When the last batch of pork is browned, remove it from the pan, lower the heat slightly and soften the onions in the fat. Stir in the peppers after five minutes and cook for a further 10 minutes.
- Add the potatoes to the pan, stir well to coat with the fat and paprika, then stir in the browned pork.
- Pour in the hot water, add the pepper and bring to a slow boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan and leave to cook for two hours, stirring occasionally.
- When the potatoes have started to dissolve into the soup, increase the heat slightly, stir well and place dumplings over the surface of the soup. Cover the pan again and cook for a further 20 minutes.
- Ladle the soup into bowls, swirl in a little soured cream if you have it, add a dumpling or two to each bowl, and enjoy.
Dumplings
Ingredients
- 100g self-raising flour
- Pinch of salt
- 50g lard
Method
- Add the salt to the flour, then rub in the lard. Drip in a little water until a soft dough comes together.
- Roll the dough into small balls.
- Add the dumplings to the soup 20 minutes before serving, turning up the heat a little and keeping the pan covered.
This you might want to call Pork Porkolt - with two little dots above the o’s.
G
An interesting variation I learned from a German friend is to sweat the onions in bacon fat and add a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste before adding back the sauteed pork and the liquids. But you are on the mark with the lard - it is the traditional Hungarian method, not with butter or marg. When your boys are older and their taste-buds more bedded in for more spices, you could try Hot Hungarian paprika for a blast of taste variation, or mix hot and sweet together in various permutations to your palates. Now I want to go and make some Porkolt - Rumpole always begs for it this time of the year.
Thanks. I thought my recipe might have been closer to paprikás but wasn’t sure as it’s many years since I spied on a Hungarian friend’s cooking methods. I know his goulash was close to this, albeit with beef and much less potato. I do know he frowned on tomato, garlic and any spices other than paprika.
It was a strange coincidence to find I’d been cooking Hungarian-style food while you were posting a comment about your late father being from Hungary and how he’d have enjoyed what we do here.
Did a similar thing myself the other day, but with left over rice….delious it was too!
I’m glad I read this today - the mother in law and D’s ex wife (long story) are arriving tomorrow and this will be ideal for tomorrow night’s supper.
Up the amount of dumplings for four adults and a couple of kids—double should do it. Keep them on the small side—slightly smaller than a golf ball—as they puff up considerably when cooking.