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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Nothing that wild here. Instead, below you will find recipe for one of my favorites: potato soup. Since potato soup is somewhat bland in taste, I flavored it with a handful of dried mushrooms and bacon. You can never go wrong with mushrooms and bacon!

Ingredients: 4 cooking potatoes, 6 dried mushrooms, one strip of bacon, pepper, one small onion, 2 tablespoons oil, 2 tablespoons flour, 4 chives, salt, marjoram
Prep Time: Very fast, under 30 minutes.

Start by peeling and cubing the potatoes (zemiaky). Add them to boiling salted water. Use approximately twice as much water as potatoes (in volume). Also add in the dried mushrooms (sušené hríby) and sliced bacon (nakrájaná slanina).

Then grate the onion (nastrúhaj cibuľu). Brown the flour on oil and add the onion. It will soon turn into solid mass. Brown on each side for a minute to let the onions caramelize.

Take the skillet off the heat and add a cup of water to dissolve the onions. Add to the soup.

Then just season to taste with pepper, salt, and marjoram. Also add finely sliced chives or parsley. (note, the soup was not that red, it’s my camera playing tricks on me)

And that’s it. Very simple. Enjoy!

For few other soup options, check out mushroom soup (which is quite similar to this one, but creamier), and soup out of green beans.

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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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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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Risotto (rizoto) is another Italian dish like spaghetti carbonara that is tremendously popular in Slovakia. This dish is best prepared with cooked meat, so it’s best made after making soup. We used the chicken used in preparing the chicken noodle soup. But other types of meat work as well. And if you don’t have cooked meat to begin with, simply start off by browning fresh meat with the onions, and then cooking it along with the rice. Follow the easy recipe below to make risotto at home.

Dice two small onions (cibuľa) and cook on oil until the onion starts getting brown. In the mean time, wash about 1.5 cups of rice (ryža).

Add the rice and fry for about a minute. Then add about twice the amount (3 cups) of water (voda). This ratio may vary depending on the rice you use, so check your bag for the correct rice-to-water ratio.

Add about tablespoon of marjoram (majorán) and the same amount of ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie).

Also add salt (soľ). Cook covered until most of the water is absorbed and the rice is done.

In the mean time, take the cooked chicken (kura), and cut it into pieces some half-inch thick. Mix into the rice, and cook covered for about 5 more minutes.

Scoop out onto a plate and enjoy. To prevent the rice from sticking to the ladle, grease the ladle lightly with oil or water. Sometimes this dish is also served with baked or mashed potatoes.

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