Gulyásleves - Traditional Goulash Soup

What Hungarian Gulyásleves actually is

Gulyásleves is a proper soup. It has chunks of beef, potatoes and vegetables sitting in plenty of red paprika broth, and you eat it with a spoon. That matters because outside Hungary the word goulash is often used for thick beef stews that are much closer to other dishes than to Hungarian gulyásleves.

The dish is strongly connected with the cattle-herding culture of the Great Hungarian Plain. The Hungarian word gulyás originally means a cattle herder, and the older family of gulyás dishes grew out of simple meat dishes cooked by herdsmen. Over time the dish changed. Potatoes, root vegetables and small pinched noodles became common in the soup version familiar today.

The name gulyásleves itself belongs to the later development of the dish. Hungarian ethnographic sources describe the soup form appearing regularly from the late nineteenth century, while older references to gulyás or gulyáshús could describe somewhat different meat preparations.

Getting the beef and onions right

Beef shank is excellent here. It contains connective tissue that softens during the long simmer and gives the broth body. Chuck also works if you cannot find shank.

Cut the meat into small cubes, roughly 2 to 3 cm across. Gulyásleves is supposed to be easy to eat with a spoon, so you do not want enormous stew-sized chunks.

You also need a good amount of onion, but there is no rule that the onion must weigh half as much as the meat. Two large onions for this amount of beef give the soup plenty of flavor and body without turning the broth excessively sweet or thick.

Cooking the onion and paprika base

Melt the lard and cook the onions slowly until they are soft and translucent. They can pick up a little color, but there is no need to deliberately brown them deeply.

Lard is a traditional and very good choice for this dish. It is not magic, though. If you do not use pork fat, a neutral cooking oil will still produce a good gulyásleves. Strongly flavored extra virgin olive oil is simply less typical of Hungarian cooking.

Take the pot off the direct heat before stirring in the ground paprika. Paprika can scorch quickly in very hot fat and burned paprika becomes unpleasantly bitter. Mix it with the onions, then continue with the meat and liquid.

The paprika matters

Use good Hungarian sweet paprika if you can get it. It should have a strong red color and a fresh, warm, slightly sweet and peppery aroma. It should not naturally taste smoky; smoked paprika is a different product and gives gulyásleves a different flavor.

You can also add a little hot Hungarian paprika if you want some heat, but the soup does not have to be fiery.

The slow simmer

Add the beef, garlic, crushed caraway, tomato and fresh pepper, then add only enough water to keep the meat gently simmering at first. Let the beef cook slowly until it begins to soften.

Once the meat is nearly tender, add the potatoes, carrots and parsley root and pour in enough additional water to turn the concentrated meat base into a proper soup. This two-stage method keeps the meat flavorful while still giving you the generous broth expected from gulyásleves.

Carrots, parsley root and potatoes

Modern Hungarian gulyásleves commonly contains potatoes and soup vegetables such as carrots and fehérrépa. Fehérrépa is usually parsley root, which looks a little like a pale carrot. It is often incorrectly translated as parsnip, but the two vegetables are not quite the same.

If parsley root is impossible to find, parsnip can be used, but it is sweeter. Use a little less so it does not change the character of the broth too much.

What about Csipetke?

Csipetke are tiny pinched pieces of stiff egg-and-flour dough traditionally cooked with soups such as gulyásleves. Their name comes from the Hungarian verb csípni, meaning to pinch.

You do not absolutely need them for a simple home pot of gulyásleves, especially when the soup already contains plenty of potatoes. But they are a very traditional addition and worth making when you want the full version.