Hungarian goulash soup – cellar goulash

Ingredients, spices for 10-15 capita :

0,6 kg smoked bacon, 0,8 kg meaty bacon (the best is the Kolozsvári bacon, but you can use boiled or raw bacon too), 1,5 kg onion, 0,5 kg fresh, beautiful carrots, 0,7 kg turnip (the parsnip is not good!), 1 kg green pepper, 0,5 kg ripe tomatoes, 2 kg healthy potatoes, 0,2 kg special, sweet grained red paprika, 5-6 kg kettle shank (or crop) diced into 2-3 cm pieces, 3-4 tablespoon Hungarian mustard, 8-10 bay leaves (not a mistake, the soup needs this amount!), 1-1 package grained caraway, dried tarragon, thyme, lovage, curcuma, chili, some nutmeg, which will be grained into the soup in the end, 2 packet celery leaves, 5-6 packet parsley, 4-5 dl dry, high quality red wine (the one from Szekszárd is the best for this purpose)

Hungarian goulash soup – cellar goulash

The cellar goulash recipe is the following: first of all, clean the shank from the membranes and the tallow, use only the pure meat. Dice the meat into small, 2-3 cm pieces (which is smaller then the average), to let its flavor and juice out more. Do not wash them after the chopping, because it becomes watery. Salt it only in the end; if possible, because usually the bacon is salty enough and it don’t need more salt.Chop the smoked bacon into small pieces, and roast it on medium fire. Chop the meaty bacon into chips, and when the grease is roasting, add it to the other bacon and roast them together. When the meaty part is becomes toasting, add the cleaned and chopped onion. Roast them, paying attention to avoid the catching. Then add the cleaned, washed, and sliced carrots and turnips. Roast, simmer and toast them together.

Don’t be scared if the whole stuff seems to be swimming in grease, this is the point of this food, the simmering in grease. When the vegetables are simmered well, add the shredded green paprika, and after a few spins, add the diced tomatoes (you can remove the skin of the tomatoes, if it annoys you in the food). Now, add the grained paprika, sprinkle it smoothly, and mix it and set up the fire to the maximum, to roast it immediately, but avoid the catching! Add the meat immediately, and mix is carefully.

This time you need big fire, to let the heat catch the surface of the meat’s outer fibers. You have to stir it, until 2-3 cm of juice springs upon the whole solid parts, and the whole mass is boiling well. Then set the fire down, stir it once more, and let it simmer in its own juice for about 3 hours, under the topper. Do not add water or wine during the simmering; just stir it sometimes, to avoid catching. When the meat is almost soft, begin the seasoning. Add the mustard, the bay leaves and sprinkle the tarragon, the grained caraway, the dried lovage leaves to taste, and with a lot of thymes. And now, the seasonings, the effects of the modern cuisine and trading. Add curcuma in plenty (which is Indian grained saffron), a few chili paprika (the African sambal pasta is good too), and the curry.

According to the original Hungarian recipe, mix it with the seasonings, and a few minutes later add the diced potato and approximately 2 liters of water in which the potato has been watered. Mix it carefully, and set the fire a little bit higher, until is starts to boil. When it is boiling, set the fire to lambent again. Chop 2 piles of washed celery sticks and the 5-6 piles of parsley into very small pieces. It is important that you need too many of these, the fresher, the better. In winter you can use frozen celery sticks and parsley, but it won’t be so delicious.

Mix it carefully a few times, so the green goods will reach everywhere. When the potato is boiled, slowly spread the high quality red wine, mix with it again carefully, boil it for a few minutes, then let it rest for 10-15 minutes.

When serving, add spicy green paprika circles on the top of the soup. Serve it with a lot of soft white bread and with dry Szekszárdi red wine, if possible.