Ingredients: one head of cabbage, 2 tbsp of oil or lard, 1 onion, 3 tsp flour, 1 small container of sour cream, paprika
Filling: 0.5lb ground beef, 1tsp oil, rice (half a cup to a cup), water (twice as much as rice), 1 small onion, 1 egg, black pepper, one clove of garlic
Prep Time: 40 minutes

Make the filling and prepare the leaves

Start by cutting out the core from the cabbage (kapusta). Also take an onion (cibuľa), and grate it using a hand grater or a food processor. You will need two onions, one for the filling, and one for the sauce.

Stir the onion on a bit of oil until it foams. Add the rice (ryža). Next add water (twice as much as rice), cover, and cook until the rice is almost done. The recipe called for 1 cup of rice for the half pound of meat, but this made for a mixture bit heavy on the rice. Use less rice if you prefer more meat.

In the meantime, put the cabbage in a pot of hot water and bring to a slow boil. The leaves will start to fall off. Carefully remove the leaves as they come off with a knife. Next cut off the bottom stiffer part so you get a flexible leave that can be rolled. Save all pieces.

Chop the stiffer cut-off pieces into small strips. Fry for few seconds on oil along with a grated onion and paprika. Cover with water and bring to a boil.

Stir in 3 teaspoons of flour (I used Wondra) into the sour cream. Take a small amount of the liquid from the sauce pan, and stir into the sour cream mixture to dilute it. This is better than directly putting the cream in the sauce, as it will keep the cream from lumping up. Stir the diluted cream into the sauce.

Mix the meat, the egg, ground black pepper, salt, and a crushed clove of garlic. Add the cooked rice, and mix together.

Filling cabbage leaves

Start filling the cabbage leaves. Take about a teaspoon of the filling and place it to one side of the leaf. Flip one side over. Ideally, do this diagonally, as if you were making a funnel. This is not shown too well in this set of pictures.

Complete the roll, and finally tuck the end pieces in.

Cook the Holubky

Place the holubky in the sauce and cover with a lid to keep them from coming apart. This may not be really required, since I cooked some separately and they stayed together.

Cook until done, the best way to check is to take one and try it. It cooked mine for about 30 minutes, until the cabbage leaves were nice and soft. By the way, you can also cook the holubky separately. This will give them a cleaner appearance. 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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I love Hungarian goulash! Goulash, the traditional dish of Hungary, refers to a beef stew cooked with the sweet powdered red pepper. At least, that’s how it’s now known. This spice, paprika, did not enter Hungarian cuisine until the 16th century. Goulash, on the other hand, was prepared by Hungarian shepherds as far back as the 9th century (these facts come from foodtimeline.org). Goulash is a great dish to prepare while going about other business, such as herding sheep – or mowing the lawn. It takes only some 20 minutes to get the brew going. It can then be left on its own to stew for hours.

Goulash can be either soupy or saucy. In Slovakia, the word guláš or gulášová polievka refers to the goulash soup made with potatoes and eaten with a spoon. Hungarian goulash (maďarský guláš), on the other hand, is the name for a thick stew eaten as the main course with a fork and knife, and served with a helping of the steamed dumpling. What a great combination! You cut off little pieces of this dumpling and use them to soak up the sauce – and “lick-clean” the plate.

Hungarian goulash is a spicy dish. In fact, it is one of only two spicy dishes common in Slovakia I can think off, with the other one being something called Detvianska nátura (recipe to be added later). It is often prepared with canned pepper and tomato combo called lečo. However, this is done just out of convenience, and you can just as easily prepare it using fresh veggies. In making this dish, I followed a recipe posted on a Slovak website. This resulted in a very authentic taste. But there are many variations on this recipe. For few others options, check out Sandy’s recipe, recipe from Hungary Guide or another one from Budapest Tourist Guide. With all this said, let’s get cooking!

Here is what you’ll need, but once again, I forgot a crucial item: cayenne pepper. Hungarian goulash is a spicy dish and this is a must!

Heat up oil (olej) in a large frying pan. Then slowly add the meat (mäso). The oil may splatter so be careful. Brown on all sides. This will take 5 to 10 minutes. Meat is browned before cooking to create a hard shell to keep the juices in. I am not sure why meat is also browned before stewing. Perhaps it helps keep the chunks together.

Next remove the meat, leaving behind the brewing sauce. In the next step, you will add various seasonings, including garlic (cesnak). One trick I learned from my grandma is that there is no need to peel garlic. Simply take an unpeeled clove, and mince it using a food grater. The hard shell will stay behind!

Now add your chopped up veggies (zelenina) and brown them for a bit. Don’t forget to add the spices: minced garlic, caraway (rasca, ground is better, but I used whole), salt (soľ), ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie), paprika (Hungarian dish without paprika? Impossible!) and a spoonful of tomato paste (paradajkový pretlak).

Then the final spice: hot pepper (štiplavá paprika). When adding red pepper, remember that the concentration will increase as the water content evaporates. Put the meat back in and add enough water (voda) to cover it. Feel free to move everything to a bigger pot if you need to, as I did. Reduce the heat once the water starts to boil.

Cover and wait. And wait. It will take about 3 hours for the meat to soften. I spent this time watching Julie & Julia. Great movie, just to bad Julia Powell decided to write her follow up book outlining (in gory detail according to reviews on Amazon) her various affairs and infidelities. Quite a different image of her marriage than the movie portrayed. In the last hour or so, I moved the lid slightly to a side to allow the steam escape. This helped thicken the sauce. The resulting sauce should be pretty thick – about one second gap thick. This means that if you run a wooden spoon through it, it will take at least a second for the gap to close up. Just as the sauce is starting to get ready and the meat is nice and tender, add some marjoram (majorám).

Serve on a dinner plate with 3 or 4 slices of the steamed dumpling (knedla). It was delicious! I offered a plate to my roommate and he pretty much licked the plate clean. This dish is almost always topped with a dried cayenne pepper, known in Slovak as baraní roh, meaning ram’s horn. Not having any, I chopped up some onions. Note, this photo was taken the following day (the first batch was eaten at 1am) and the sauce thickened overnight. So I added water to thin it, but slightly too much. Hence the slightly watery look to the sauce. Enjoy and dobrú chuť!

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I like food and I’ll eat pretty much anything. However, there are few things I can’t stand, and tlačenka is one of them. I find it absolutely disgusting. However, this dish is favorite of many Slovaks including just about everyone in my family. The name is derived from the verb tlačiť, to press. A crowd of people, for instance on a bus during the rush hour, is called tlačenica. This dish is made by preparing a meat paste and then pressing it together. It is another dish that is prepared during zabíjačka along with hurky and sausages.

You start this recipe by cooking about 2 lbs of various pork meat. About half of it should be pieces of fatty meat (side cut or shoulder), and the other half is made up of other parts, such as heart, kidneys and something called podhrdlina (meaning “under throat”). You cook the meat until it is soft and then grind it in a meat grinder, similar to what was done to prepare jaternica. Save the broth.

Then add a tea spoon of crushed garlic, ground black pepper, half a spoon of caraway and another spoon of salt. Adjust to taste.

Then add about 5 small ladles full of the broth in which the meat was cooking. The final mixture should have the consistency of canned tuna.

There are special bags made for preparing tlačenka. However, these are not necessary, and you can use regular plastic bags. Divide the meat into two halves and place each into a plastic bag. Press out the air and tie shut with a string. Then just to be sure, place each bag into another bag, and tie that one shut too. Place the bags into a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes. To make sure the plastic doesn’t burn, place them first into a strainer. Then place the bags onto a baking sheet and cover by a baking pan. Place in some cool place (or outside during winter). Weigh down by placing some heavy object, such as a brick or a bag of flour, into the pan. Let set overnight.

And that’s it. Enjoy or at least offer to those who like this “delicacy”. It is often served as shown in the photo, with mustard, onions and smoked sausages. Tweet

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Jaternica (also known as hurka) is a special pork sausage prepared during zabíjačka, the traditional annual slaughter of a pig. It’s made out of pork meat mixed with rice. Although it is commonly prepared in the sausage form, this is not necessary. Hurka, in my opinion, is even tastier when prepared as porridge (kaša). The porridge is fried for few minutes on a frying pan and then served with a side of baked potatoes and perhaps beets. In this recipe I show you how to prepare this specialty. You will need pork liver and hearts and some way to grind the meat. We used a “mill for meat“, mlynček na mäso. These are not very common in America but you can probably find one online. Or perhaps you could use a food processor. But as a word of warning, I have never tried putting meat in a food processor.

Start by washing and cooking 2lbs of rice. Cook the rice in twice the volume of water (voda). We used my grandma’s coffee mugs for measuring. We had 4.5 mugs of rice and thus we used 9 mugs of water. Add about a tablespoon of salt (soľ) and a bit of oil (olej). Cook until all the water is gone. Then turn the heat off, but leave the rice on the stove covered. It will continue to cook in the steam. Also dice 2 small onions and fry them until golden colored. My grandma fried these along with few pieces of bacon (slanina).

At the same time, cook the meat (mäso) in salted water. Cook it until it is soft, which will take about 45 minutes. Make sure you have enough water to cover all the meat. Then take the cooked meat, cut it into strips which will fit in your meat grinder, and get grinding. Save the broth if you want to prepare another zabíjačka specialty, tlačenka (pressed meat).

Combine with rice and also add 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper (čierne korenie), 2 table spoons of salt and another teaspoon of marjoram (majorán). You want to go light on the marjoram since it can spoil the meat. Also mix in the fried onion. Mix together.

And that’s it. To serve, fry the porridge in a frying pan for about 5 minutes. Serve with your choice of sides, but I highly recommend thinly sliced baked potatoes (with caraway) and beets.

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