Hungarian Goulash (Gulyás)

Tempo

1h 10

Picante

Dificuldade

Médio

Rende

6porções

Ingredientes

Meat

1 kg

acém (beef chuck), cut into 3-4cm cubes

100g smoked bacon, diced (or use 50g lard if you have it)

Aromatics

large onions, finely diced (slightly more onion than meat by volume — this matters)

garlic cloves, minced

medium green bell peppers, diced

medium tomatoes, diced (or 1 tbsp tomato paste)

fresh red chile (optional, mild — *cseresznyepaprika* equivalent)

Spices (the heart of the dish)

3 tbsp

**good paprika doce** — Hungarian "édesnemes" if you can get it (Mundo Verde, specialty importers); otherwise the best Spanish or Portuguese sweet paprika you can find

1 tsp

paprika defumada (smoked paprika)

1 tsp

caraway seeds, lightly crushed

1 tbsp

dried marjoram (don't substitute oregano — it's not the same)

bay leaf

Salt and black pepper to taste

Liquid + finish

1.2 l

beef stock (or water + 2 stock cubes)

600g potatoes, peeled and cubed

medium carrot, diced

Optional: csipetke (pinched noodles)

100g flour

egg

Pinch of salt

Modo de preparo

01**Render bacon.** In the pressure cooker on sauté mode, render the diced bacon until it gives up most of its fat. Lift bacon out with a slotted spoon, leave the fat.
02**Sweat onions.** Add diced onion to the bacon fat. Cook over medium heat 10-12 minutes until **soft, glossy, and lightly golden** — do not brown hard. Hungarian goulash starts with onion that has melted, not caramelized.
03**CRITICAL: bloom paprika off the heat.** Turn the heat OFF. Wait 30 seconds for the pot to cool slightly. Add paprika doce and paprika defumada to the onions. Stir vigorously for 20-30 seconds. **If the paprika burns, the dish is ruined** — burnt paprika is bitter and unfixable. The pan must not be smoking when you add it.
04**Build base.** Heat back to medium. Add garlic, caraway, marjoram, diced tomato, optional chile, bay leaf. Stir 1 minute.
05**Add meat.** Tip in the cubed acém. Stir to coat. Cook 3-4 minutes, no need to brown hard — this is a stew, not a sear-and-braise.
06**Add liquid and pressure cook.** Pour in 800ml of the stock (reserve 400ml for now). Stir, scrape the bottom. Lock lid, high pressure, **35 minutes**. Natural release.
07**Add vegetables, finish in second pressure stage.** Open lid. Add potatoes, carrot, bell peppers, and the reserved 400ml stock. Lock lid, high pressure, **8 minutes**. Quick release.
08**Adjust.** Taste. The stew should be thickening from the dissolved onion and starches, not from flour or roux. Add salt, pepper, and a splash of water if too thick. Return the bacon. Discard bay leaf.
09**Optional csipetke.** While stage 2 is cooking, mix flour + egg + salt into a stiff dough. Pinch off **fingernail-sized pieces**, drop into the simmering soup at the end. Cook 3-4 minutes uncovered until they float.

Hungarian Goulash (Gulyás)

The original gulyás is a soup, not a stew — Hungarian cattle herders cooked it in cauldrons over open fire on the puszta. The thick stew most non-Hungarians know is pörkölt or paprikás. This recipe sits between: hearty enough to be a meal, soupy enough to need a deep bowl. Pressure cooker brings 2-3 hours of simmering to under an hour.

Heat: 0/5. The flavor is paprika-forward — sweet paprika, smoked paprika, fresh marjoram, caraway. No chile. The dish lives or dies by your paprika quality.

Serving

Deep bowls. Crusty bread (broa or pão sourdough). A blob of sour cream is non-traditional in real gulyás but lovely. Cold beer or a Hungarian Egri Bikavér.

Notes

Paprika quality is everything. Cheap supermarket paprika is dust — the flavor and color in goulash must come from a fresh, fragrant jar. Open the jar; you should smell sweet, fruity, almost-tomato. If it smells like sawdust, replace it.
Onion volume matters. Onion-to-meat ratio is roughly 1:1 by weight in classic gulyás. The dissolved onion is what gives the soup body.
No flour, no roux. Hungarian gulyás is not thickened by flour. Pörkölt and paprikás aren't either. If a recipe tells you to roux it, it's been Americanized.
Better the next day. Standard for any paprika-and-onion stew.
Vegetarian version: swap meat for 200g cremini mushrooms + 200g chickpeas + 200g extra root veg. Drop pressure to 12 min stage 1.