Goulash is a Hungarian stew featuring beef, onions, carrots, celery, bell pepper, potatoes and lots of paprika. I love this twist on beef stew as it is a bit stronger in flavor and it has a bit of acidity to it. Use Hungarian sweet paprika for this dish and you need 1/2 cup of it, so make sure you buy enough. Do not use hot paprika, or this dish will be way too hot.
This stew takes a few hours to cook, mostly passive cooking in the oven, so plan for that. Goulash is one of those dishes that tastes even better after it sits, so it makes great leftovers for lunches and it also freezes well. I prefer to buy a chuck roast and cut it up for the beef here. You can also use precut stew meat, just adjust your cooking time a bit depending on the size of the pieces of meat.
Goulash
Ingredients
- 4 cups chicken stock or beef stock
- 4 packets unflavored gelatin (1 oz or 30g total)
- 2 tbsp oil
- 3 lbs boneless beef chuck roast cut into bite sized pieces
- salt and pepper
- 4 medium carrots diced
- 2 celery stalks diced
- 1 large onion sliced
- 2 red bell peppers sliced
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1/2 cup sweet Hungarian paprika
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp fish sauce optional
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 lb Yukon gold potatoes peeled and cubed
- 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- fresh or dried parsley for serving
Instructions
- Heat oven to 300. Pour chicken or beef stock into a bowl and sprinkle all the gelatin over and set aside. In a large dutch oven, heat the oil to shimmering and season the beef all over with salt and pepper.
- Cook beef in small batches, allowing it to get well browned before moving and it and transferring each batch to a plate as you go. After you have cooked all the beef, reduce heat to medium and add a little more oil if needed and add the carrots, onion, celery, garlic and bell pepper to the pan and sprinkle with a pinch of salt.
- Cook, stirring occasionally until the vegetables start to brown, 8-10 minutes. Sprinkle with the paprika and cook, until fragrant. Add in the stock/gelatin, soy sauce, fish sauce, bay leaves and thyme. Toss the beef with the flour and then add it in.
- Bring to a boil and mix well. Cover and place into the oven. Cook for 2 hours, checking occasionally to see where liquid level is and add a little water if getting too low. Add potatoes and continue to cook another 45 – 60 min until potatoes are tender. Remove the bay leaves and if needed you can bring to a boil on the stove to reduce the broth to a thick consistency. Add a tbsp of vinegar and taste and adjust with more vinegar and salt and pepper. Serve with parsley on top.