Late last year my aunt Margie went to Hungary and brought me back a gift bag that included Hungarian sweet paprika. I swooned! Then I spent ages combing through my Pinterest boards to decide how I was going to use that lovely paprika. This is not a decision to be made lightly, and I debated it for a while. In the end, I decided to start with a classic goulash. So let’s finally open that paprika and find out what it’s like to make this Hungarian Beef Goulash recipe with authentic Hungarian paprika.
Hungarian beef goulash is a spicy beef stew with onions and plenty of paprika. Here’s an easy recipe for this classic dish where everything cooks in a single pot.
The Ingredients
I was a little surprised at how short the list of ingredients for this recipe was. I’m not sure why since I’ve never made goulash before, but I assumed there would be tons of ingredients and I would need to do lots of prep work. Not so!
In fact, I had most everything on hand, and I only had to shop for the fresh ingredients and the vegetable broth. All were easy to find, and the beef was about $20 for 3.2 pounds. A little pricey at first glance, but then again it was a lot of meat.
I did my usual of buying a whole chuck roast and cutting it into smaller pieces. That way I get the cut of meat I want and the pieces are the size I want. It’s worth that little bit of extra effort.
The Process
The instructions for this beef goulash recipe were short and easy to follow, and it was ready in the amount of time specified. Here is how my time was spent:
- 11 minutes to prep
- 2 hours 13 minutes to cook
- 2 hours 24 minutes total
The only time I was unsure about the instructions was at step 3 when it said to brown the beef in the pot with the onions and garlic. I used a 5-quart pot, but it was very crowded (there were a lot of onions), and the beef really didn’t brown well. Fortunately, not getting a nice sear on the beef chunks didn’t seem to affect it, and it still cooked up to be tender and juicy.
