Ingredients for 40 servings: 1.5 cups oil, 3.3 lbs onions (about 8 large ones), 7lb cubed beef, water, 4 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp Cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 2 tbsp salt, 4.5 lbs potatoes (15 small ones), 3 tbsp marjoram, 8 cloves garlic, beer (optional)
Prep Time: 30 minutes of prep time, 2 hours for cooking

Here is what you will need for this version of goulash: beef, potatoes, onions, and various spices.

Chop the onions (cibule). The pieces don’t have to be too small since the onions will dissolve during cooking. Pour the oil (olej) into your kettle and wait for it to get hot. Then add the onions. Fry them until they get golden and glass-like translucent. Add the meat (mäso) and brown it from all sides. You can brown all the meat in the kettle but I figured it will be faster if I do one half (one 3lb packet) separately in a frying pan. If you fry your meat separately like this, make sure to pour in all the juices into the kettle. Add water. I didn’t measure how much I added in, but it was enough to get this 16L stock pot 2/3 full. Roughly speaking, you want half the soup be water and the other half meat. When adding water, it’s better to add in several small batches and wait for the water to come to boil in between each addition. This way the meat will continue to cook.

Add the spices: paprika (sladká červená paprika), Cayenne pepper (štiplavá červená paprika), ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie), and salt (soľ). Cover and let simmer on low heat for about an hour. In the meantime, peel and cube all but two potatoes and get minced garlic ready to go.

About an hour later

Add the cubed potatoes into the goulash once the meat is almost ready. Also add the marjoram, I used both fresh and dried. When substituting fresh herbs for dried ones, use one tablespoon of fresh herbs for each one teaspoon of dried herbs.

Mince the garlic cloves and add these into the pot. Also grate the remaining two peeled potatoes using a grater. Add these in as well, these potatoes will help thicken the stew.

Finally, if the goulash tastes too thick, you can thin it by adding some dark beer. Or just add the beer regardless. I used about 1/3 bottle of “dark amber” brew. And that’s it, look at all that delicious oil floating on top!

Slovak Picnic in Turkey Run, VA

And just few photos from the picnic. I ended up reheating the goulash using this portable gas stove. This was my first time using it and it’s a really handy thing! The only issue is that the flame is really hot. It didn’t even occur to me to keep stirring the goulash while heating it up, and some potatoes on the bottom burned. So unfortunately the goulash had bit of a burned taste. But nobody really complained, I guess that’s part of the charm of eating in the outdoors…

We also had hot dogs (párky). The Giant grocery chain sells “New York deli-style” hot dogs that look and taste very much like Slovak hot dogs. By the way, hot dogs are served differently in Slovakia than here in the US. One way is to serve them in a hollowed out bread roll. These are hollowed out by a heated spike that toasts the roll from the inside. You then squirt mustard into the slot and then put in the párok. This kind of hot dog is called, quite appropriately, párok v rožku (hot dog in a bread roll). The other way of serving hot dogs is by simply placing two cooked pieces on a paper plate with mustard and few slices of rye or whole wheat bread. This way is popular at festivals where vendors may not have that fancy bread roll toasting spike.

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Ingredients 2 beef pork round steaks (about 0.6lbs), half an onion, hot peppes, salt, black pepper, 50g mushrooms, lečo (or one bell pepper and one tomato), 1 teaspoon mustard, 1 teaspoon ketchup
Prep Time: 30 minutes

Start by cutting the meat into thin noodle strips. Do the same with the onion. Then sear it on hot oil from both sides for a minute or two.

Add the onions and cook until they start turning golden (another few minutes). Then add the remaining veggies: hot peppers, mushrooms, and lečo. If you don’t have lečo handy, you can substitute diced bell peppers and tomato.

But not having that either (the tomato, that is), I put in some four tablespoons of tomato paste. And to give it more color, I used half of a green pepper and half of a red one. Also mix in one teaspoon of mustard (I used the horseradish, chreň, kind), and the same amount of ketchup.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and continue braising until the veggies soften. I added about a cup of water to thin the tomato paste. Also, the peppers were not hot at all. So I added about a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper. I chose those peppers as they looked very much like the kind that’s used in Slovakia, called ram’s horn, baraní roh. If I remember right, they are much hotter overseas. Serve with rice, potatoes, or potato pancakes. Or, even IN a potato pancake… Dobrú chuť.

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Here is a recipe for a simple meet dish. It’s called čevabčiči, word which doesn’t mean anything at all in Slovak. This dish surely came to Slovakia from overseas, probably somewhere near the Balkans. The day after I made it I went with a friend for lunch to an Iranian kabob restaurant Moby Dick’s, where I ordered “kabob-e-kubideh”. Although it came with rice, these two meals shared much in common! So I asked the owner if he knew anything about the origin of word “chevabchichi”, but he didn’t: it did not sound Iranian. Hence I next got on Google, and it appears that this dish originated in the former Yugoslavia. Here is a link to a short article about it on Chicago’s SunTimes.

There are several variations of this food dish, with some including grated onion in the mix. I did not use that, but I did use garlic. Use a tiny handful of breadcrumbs to stiffen the meat mixture.

Mix all the ingredients together and form about a handful first into a ball, and then into a sausage link an inch in diameter. Grill these on all sides in a hot frying pan. They should be dark and crunchy on the outside.

Serve with boiled potatoes, mustard and few slices of raw onion. Enjoy!

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You may have noticed that there are not too many meaty dishes on this site. This is not because Slovaks don’t eat meat. On the contrary, meaty foods are actually quite popular. The reason is instead different. It is I who is not a big meat eater. And because of this, I don’t actually know much about cooking meat.

I figured it was time to change that. So I decided to learn how to make a really popular Slovak dish called sviečková na smotane, meaning tenderloin on cream. This is one dish you definitely must try on your travels to Slovakia. It is offered in just about every restaurant. Sviečková is also the single most complicated dish I have prepared to date. OK, perhaps complicated is not the right word. The most involved. Turns out, making this dish is actually pretty simple, but it requires quite a few steps.

In preparing this dinner, I followed a recipe from minibazar.sk, a strange combination of craigslist and a cooking site. But I love the recipes on minibazar. They are always completely authentic (submitted by regular people) and many have pictures – which I clearly find very useful in cooking. This particular recipe called for marinading the meat over the course of few days. Another recipe, one in the classic Czechoslovak Cookbook, tells instead to bake the meat while basting for some hour and a half in a 325F oven. Whatever you choose, this dish will not disappoint.

Instead of tenderloin (or sirloin), I used eye round, since that’s what my supermarket had already packed up in a large enough quantity. Eye round is somewhat dryer than tenderloin, but since I marinated it, I figured it won’t matter much. Having said that, let’s start cooking!

The left photo shows many, but not all, of the ingredients you’ll need. The beer is not an ingredient, but I like to have a glass of a cold one while cooking. You should use a parsley root (petržlen) but those are pretty much impossible to find in America. So I used a parsnip instead. I figured that although it is not the same vegetable, it at least looks very much alike. Peel and cut the root vegetables. Also cut the celery (zeler) but keep the onion (cibuľa) whole. Cook, along with black pepper (čierne korenie), caraway (rasca), bay leaf (bobkový list) and a slice of lemon (koliesko citrónu), in 2 cups of water. Cook for about 2 minutes after the water comes to boil.

While the vegetable “soup” is cooling down, take the cut of meat (mäso) and rinse it off. Dry it off with paper towels and then use a sharp knife to cut slits in it all around. Place about inch wide cuts of bacon (slanina) into the slots. Really shove them in there. Doing this reminded me of my friend Patricia’s visit to Slovakia in 2010. She is a vegetarian and commented that in Slovakia all vegetable dishes seem to have bacon in them. Turns out, in Slovakia even meat has bacon!

Place the meat in the vegetable mixture after it has cooled off completely. Add more water if needed so that at least half of the meat is underwater. Cover and place in the fridge at least overnight. Turn the meat periodically to get it marinated from both sides.

2 days later…

Take the marinated meat out and dry it off. This next step is pretty tricky so be careful. Heat up oil (olej) in a large pot (I used the same that had the vegetables in it, which I transferred to a different pot). Then lightly brown the meat on all sides. The tricky part is placing the meat in the oil and then flipping it. I used a large fork to pick it up and a knife to support it from the bottom. Chop up the onion (cibuľa) and fry in the oil until it starts turning yellow. Then add the rest of the vegetables and about a cup of the marinade water.

Also, start working on the knedľa.

Cover and let steam for about hour and a half. Add more water as needed. You are done when the meat feels soft. Take the meat out and slice it. It will have this beautiful dark purple color on the inside. This was the first time I have ever prepared such a large hunk of meat and I was really pleased with the outcome!

The next step involves liquefying the veggies. This would have been so much easier if had a hand-held mixer like the one shown in the original recipe. But since I didn’t, I used the traditional method – a metal strainer. This worked, but boy, next time I am getting a blender! Make sure to scrape off the mushed up veggies from the bottom.

Use heavy whipping cream (smotana) to make the sauce (omáčka). I used about equal amounts of water and cream, and kept adding until I got something of fairly creamy consistency. Add salt and little bit of lemon, to taste. Cook for a minute or two and then add the meat to heat it up.

This dish is traditionally served with a side of whole-berry cranberry (brusnice) sauce, whipped cream (slahačka) and a slice of cooked lemon (citrón). To make the whipped cream, simply take the unused cream from making the sauce and beat it until it turns solid. This was the first time I had whipped cream like this. It’s so much better than the spray kind. Serve with knedľa. Enjoy and dobrú chuť! That husk figurine in the picture on right is typical of traditional Slovak folk art. I wanted to put something Slovak in the picture, but the only thing I could find was this figurine from a larger advent set.

If you compare my sauce to the one served in Slovak restaurants (for instance, as shown here) you will see mine is much “chunkier”. I guess this is that home-made, metal strainer, touch.

For other great meaty Slovak dishes, check out Segedin goulash, chicken baked on salt and stuffed peppers.

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Alena from Žiar nad Hronom sent me recipe and pictures of her mom preparing španielske vtáčky, a delicious dish consisting of meat steaks filled with egg, hot dog and pickle. I have to admit that for the longest time I thought the name of this dish was španielske vtáčiky (notice that extra i), which would mean “little spanish birds”. But it’s not. I have no clue what vtáčky means! I even tried Google Translate and the online Slovak dictionary at slovnik.sk but no luck. My best guess is that it is derived from zatáčat (vtáčat?) which means to roll up. Which makes sense, since these are rolls, spanish rolls.

Žiar nad Hronom is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants. It is located less than an hour from my home town of Banská Bystrica, on the way to the capital, Bratislava. Very near the city is thermal spa Sklené Teplice (Glass Thermals). I spent a really fun Valentine’s Day weekend there (yes, Valentine’s Day is now celebrated even in Slovakia). The most unique feature of this spa, and something definitely worth your visit, is the cave bath. You basically swim inside a cave with water temperature reaching almost 108F!

Here is Alena’s recipe for spanish rolls. They look great!

Start by tenderizing the meat (mäso) with a meat tenderizer (the hammer, not the chemicals!). Also hard boil the eggs (vajíčka). Salt (osoľ) and pepper (okoreň) the meat and then load it with hot dog (párok), pickle (kyslá uhorka) and egg (vajce) – a quarter of each, that is. Roll into a tube and tie closed with a string (niť).

Then heat up oil (olej) in a pot and fry diced onion (cibuľa) until it turns golden. Add paprika.

Also add little bit water. Then add the rolls, steam covered until the meat is done. Add more water as needed.

Take the rolls out once the meat is cooked and remove the strings. Add little bit of flour into the pot to thicken the sauce. Place the meat back in the sauce and boil for few minutes.

Serve with mashed potatoes (zemiakové pyré)or rice (ryža). Dobrú chuť!

By the way, I am always looking for more recipes. Feel free to send me your own step-by-step recipes and I’ll gladly publish them here. I am especially looking for instructions for baking various koláče.

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