Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

Central Europe · Volume 38, The Pepper That Came Late, the Herdsman's Pot and the Coffeehouse

Marhapörkölt

The whole country

Marhapörkölt, beef braised with onion and paprika in lard, no flour and no cream: a heavy enamelled pot of dark red glossy beef stew with chunks of tender beef in a thick onion and paprika gravy, a plate of pale egg dumplings beside it with the stew spooned over.

Illustration

Time
3 hours

The dish gulyás used to mean. The weights below are Erdei János's for Magyar Konyha, a chef's pot of four kilos of meat brought down to one; the proportions are his and the arithmetic is ours.

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. About 3 hours.

Ingredients

  • 1kg beef shin or shoulder, in cubes
  • 500g onions, finely chopped
  • 40g lard
  • 25g sweet paprika
  • to taste salt
  • to taste caraway
  • 5g garlic
  • 1 green pepper
  • 1 tomato
  • as needed water

Method

  1. Cook the onion in the lard, slowly, until it is soft and gold.
  2. Off the heat, stir in the paprika; add a little water; return to the heat.
  3. Add the beef shin or shoulder, the salt, the caraway and the garlic, and let it cook in its own juice, covered, adding water only when it has dried, for about 3 hours, until the meat gives.
  4. Add the pepper and tomato for the last half hour. Serve with nokedli or bread, and pickles.

What a modern chef changes

The onion given its hour

Rungs 1 and 6

Method

  1. Cook the onion for a full hour in mangalica lard, which melts lower and tastes of the pig, until it has collapsed to a paste.
  2. Bloom the paprika in the pot off the heat with a thermometer in the fat, at 110 degrees and not above.
  3. Braise in the oven at 120 degrees, covered, 4 hours, which gives the slow fire without watching it.
  4. Serve with a spoon of tejföl on the side, so the eater and not the cook decides whether it is a paprikás.
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