The Little Daco-Hungarian Expat Makes Gulyas

After spending a long time in the fatty, sugary, GMO, antibiotic-ladden land of the USA, the little daco-hungarian decided to make himself some gulyas, for the first time ever. Here is his step-by-step recipe, with way too many pictures and details about all the mistakes he made.

In­gre­di­ents for a single person for 3 days:

• smallest pack of packaged beef you can find (in my case it had about 250g)
• 2 carrots
• 5 potatoes
• 1 red onion
• 1 bell pepper
• can of peas
• 1 tomato
• 1 egg
• 3-4 spoons of flour
• salt
• ground black pepper
• ground red Hungarian pepper (paprika)

Get a clean plate all the in­gre­di­ents.

Slice the meat into small pieces and remove most of the white bits.

Chop up half a red onion. Try not to cry (I succeeded).

Get a large-ish pot (4-5 liters).

Heat up some oil (3-4 mm) in it and then fry onion until it's    yellow-brownish, all while stirring. It should take about 1-2 minutes.

Add the meat into the oil and stir for 15-20 seconds until it whitens.

Add the ground red pepper and stir everything for another 15-20    seconds so that the red pepper gets absorbed by the oil (it's not water    soluble).

Just add H2O.

Add a teaspoon of salt.

Add a pinch of pepper. If you by any chance mis­un­der­stand the in­struc­tions,     and by accident add more, like a tea­spoon­ful, so that the goulash would be     fire-breathing spicy, proceed to do a de­canta­tion operation, by slowly     putting all the liquid in another container, hope that most of the pepper is     at the bottom of the first container, and throw the last 2 cms out.

Peel off the skin of a tomato, chop the tomato up, add it to the pot.

Chop up half a bell pepper and add it.

Don't boil it too hard, because most of the water will evaporate. You should     heat it up so it's simmering. In case the water does evaporate too much, you     can compensate it by adding more boiling water. Don't add cold water, it     won't play nice with the veggies, so first boil the extra water in another     pot before adding it to the main one.

Start writing blog postWait a long-ish time.

Chop up 2 carrots, add them to the gulyas-to-be after about 1 hour.

Ocas­sion­al­ly test the meat if it's ready. Try to stick the fork into it. It     should go through without a problem. Then try to tear of a piece. It should     come off easily. Then taste it. It should taste... like cooked meat. Failure     at any step means it's not yet ready. Hint: most of the time it won't be.

Chop up 4-5 potatoes, add them to the gulyas about 30 minutes before it's     finished (so the meat is almost done).

Crack an egg and beat it up.

Add a pinch of salt to the egg.

Add a spoon of flour.

Mix well the flour with the egg.

Is the resulting com­po­si­tion a thick liquid, that won't flow too quickly     from one end of the container to the other? If no, go to step 20 again. Else     go to 23.

Taste the carrots and potatoes. They should taste almost like when eating at     a restaurant, needing about 10-15 more minutes of boiling.

Pick up noodle mix a quarter of a spoon at a time and drop it into the     simmering soup. They expand in the water, so don't make them too big (aka     don't make them like in the picture below).

Let it boil for 10 minutes.

Add peas from a can.

Boil about 5 more minutes.

Taste everything: meat, potatoes, carrots, noodles. Do they feel right? Or     at least good enough for you? If no, let it boil a bit more. Or add more salt. Or order takeout.

Take it off the stove and let it cool.

Put in a plate and enjoy your goulash :)

FYI, the little daco-hungarian also made himself a dessert, based on this Youtube video, but it's not yet ready :( (it's still in the fridge).