Goulash Soup
Author:
Thomas Sixt is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger.
Here he shares recipes, answers cooking questions and helps with cooking.
You can find my goulash soup recipe in this post.
For a 100% sure-fire cooking experience, I’ve prepared comprehensive instructions for you.
In many cooking blogs we are taught “simple cooking”, yet the creator often lacks cooking knowledge and expertise.
When preparing goulash and goulash soup, unfortunately, you can do a lot of things wrong.
This summary should enable you to cook a fine homemade goulash soup.
Discover here all the chef tips I have collected in 30 years as a chef between Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest and Zurich.
Have fun reading and tasting, in addition I wish you much success in the kitchen!
Table of Contents
- 1. Recipe Goulash Soup
- 2. Calories And Nutritional Values
- 3. Hungarian Goulash Soup
- 4. Goulash Soup Chef
- 5. Classic Goulash Soup
- 6. Cooking Grandma’s Goulash Soup Simple
- 7. Goulash Soup In the Oven
- 8. Goulash Soup With Potatoes
- 9. Party Goulash Soup
- 10. Boil Down Goulash Soup, Preserve It
- 11. Frequently asked questions about goulash soup
- 12. More Goulash Recipes Ideas
1. Recipe Goulash Soup
Here you will find the step by step instructions with many photos.
This time there are many goulash pictures :-), which gives you the perfect overview.
You’ll find more cooking tips and info on the popular stew after the recipe.
Would you like to write to me? Is there a question left or do you feel like having a chat in the kitchen?
You can send me your cooking questions and nice kitchen gossip via the comment function at the bottom of the page.
Goulash soup
Cooked, photographed and written down by chef Thomas Sixt.
Instructions for preparing original goulash soup in variants.
Ingredients
| 500 | g | beef goulash meat (goulash meat) |
| 450 | g | onion |
| 60 | g | plant oil |
| 1 | tsp | brown cane sugar |
| 50 | g | paprika nobel sweet |
| 2 | tbsp | tomato paste |
| 2,5 | l | Beef broth (I use bone broth) |
| 4 | Piece | marrow bones |
| 2 | tbsp | majoram |
| 1 | tbsp | Caraway |
| 1 | Piece | Lemon |
| 4 | Piece | glove of garlic |
| 1 | tbsp | corn starch |
| 400 | g | potato |
| 4 | Piece | Red peppers |
| 2 | Pinches | primal salt |
| 4 | Pinches | Pepper black, ground |
| 3 | Pinches | brown cane sugar |
| 4 | Pinches | Chili |
| 1 | Bunch | fresh parsley |
Equipment
Instruction
Prepare goulash soup
Prepare bone broth
Prepare a bone broth, alternatively you can use beef broth.
For bone broth, you can find an easy recipe elsewhere.
Prepare ingredients
Prepare the ingredients for the goulash soup in the kitchen.
Cutting beef
Cut the beef into 1 cm cubes.
Provide beef
Place the sliced beef in a bowl.
Peel onion
Halve the onions and then peel them.
Remove unsightly parts of the onion.
Leave the roots on the onion halves.
Dice onion
Dice the onion:
To do this, place the onion half on the board.
Cut the onion vertically and horizontally towards the root.
Then finely dice the onion.
You can find a detailed description in the cooking school dicing onions.
Provide onions
Place the diced onions on the board or in a bowl.
Prepare pot
Kupfertopf von Falk Culinair verwendet.
Die vorbereiteten Zwiebelwürfel in das heiße Öl geben.
“>
Prepare a large saucepan and heat on the stove with the vegetable oil.
I used the Falk Culinair copper pot .
Put the prepared onion cubes in the hot oil.
Sweat onions
Sweat the onion cubes in the pot for 12 minutes.
Stir constantly.
Brown onions
Brown the onions until golden.
Add sugar
Add the sugar to the onions.
I used a level teaspoon on that amount of onions.
Caramelize onions
Sauté the onions again and mix with the sugar.
Let the sugar caramelize.
Finish onions
After approx. 4 minutes cooking time, the onions have taken on a golden yellow, nice and even colour,
Add meat
Add the prepared meat to the onions and stir.
Maintain the heat in the pot.
Add paprika powder
Add the paprika powder and spread over the goulash starter.
Paprika
Stir the paprika once, then remove the pot from the heat.
Tomato paste
Add the tomato paste.
Tomato
Put the pot back on the stove and stir and roast the tomato paste.
The tomato paste needs to roast from the color red to dark brown in color.
Extinguishing
Pour the bone broth or beef broth over the goulash starter.
Deglaze the goulash starter.
Marrow bones
Add the marrow bones from the bone broth or fresh marrow bones if using a beef broth to the goulash soup.
Add marjoram
Supplement the goulash soup with marjoram.
Cut garlic
Halve the garlic cloves, peel and cut into fine cubes.
Grate garlic
Sprinkle the garlic cubes with salt and then chop and grate with the blade of a knife.
Garlic sprinkled with salt does not become bitter when crushed and pressed.
Add garlic
Add the chopped garlic to the goulash soup.
Grind cumin
Crush the cumin seeds freshly in a mortar.
Freshly crushed seeds give more flavor.
Add cumin
Add the crushed caraway seeds to the goulash soup.
Add lemon zest
Finely grate a lemon and add the zest to the goulash.
Cook meat
Simmer the goulash soup for 60 to 120 minutes.
Add liquid as needed.
A so-called goulash mirror forms on the surface of the goulash due to the added paprika.
Prepare peppers
Rinse the peppers
Wash, dry and halve the peppers.
Rinse peppers
Core the halved peppers and cut out the white skin.
Peel peppers
Peel the pepper halves with the pendulum peeler.
Peeled peppers
Peel the remaining pepper halves in the same way.
Cut peppers
Place the peeled peppers in pieces on the board.
Cut strips
Cut the peppers in halves or quarters into even strips 5 mm wide.
Dice the pepper strips
Cut the pepper strips into 5 mm cubes.
Provide diced peppers
Place the evenly chopped peppers in a bowl.
Prepare potatoes
Peel potatoes
Wash, dry and peel the potatoes.
Prepare potatoes
Place the peeled potatoes in a bowl of cold water.
Potato slices
Cut the potatoes into 5mm thick slices.
Potato sticks
Cut the potato slices into sticks 5 mm thick.
Cut cubes
Cut the potato sticks into 5 mm cubes.
Provide potatoes
Immediately place the diced potatoes in cold water to prevent them from turning brown.
Boil potatoes
Cook the potato cubes in a saucepan with salted water until al dente.
Drain potatoes
Drain the potatoes and set aside.
Provide vegetables
Set aside a small portion of the boiled diced potatoes and diced peppers to decorate the plates later.
Remove marrow bone
Remove the cooked marrow bones from the goulash soup and place them on the board.
Release bones
Separate the meat from the marrow bones and remove the marrow from the bones.
You can dispose of the empty, cleaned bones.
Chop meat
Cut the detached meat and the marrow from the bone into small pieces.
Supplement meat
Add the finely chopped meat and marrow of the bones to the goulash soup and bring to the boil.
Taste the meat in the soup and cook until soft as needed.
Add potatoes
Add the boiled potatoes to the soup.
Add peppers
Add the diced peppers to the soup.
Boil the goulash soup once.
Prepare starch
Put a tablespoon of cornstarch in a bowl.
Mix starch water
Add cold water to the cornstarch and stir.
Tie goulash soup
Boil the goulash soup and slowly add the starch water.
Thicken the goulash soup as you wish, add more starch water if necessary and bring to the boil.
Taste
Season the goulash soup with salt, pepper, sugar and chilli.
Serve
Serve the goulash soup as desired.
If desired, serve with pieces of pepper and extra heated pieces of potato and decorate with parsley.
Boil goulash soup
Alternatively, pour the goulash soup into glasses and boil it down.
The paragraph under heading 10. Boil goulash soup, preserve information.
Video
Cousine
2. Calories And Nutritional Values
As usual, you can find the exactly calculated nutritional values for goulash soup in the table below.
3. Hungarian Goulash Soup
The goulash soup is for us in the origin a typical dish of the Hungarian cuisine.
In Hungary, it is a variant of pörkölt, prepared there with beef and pork, onions, garlic, cumin, tomato paste and paprika powder.
In Hungary, goulash is traditionally served as a soup.
In German-speaking countries, on the other hand, it is usually prepared as a ragout and plate dish as well as a stew.
Originally, the dish was called “gulyásos leves” in Hungary, which means “soup in the manner of the cattle herder”.
Various sources prove:
In the past, the Hungarian beef herder cooked his goulash soup from lamb, poultry or pork and even fish, but never from beef.
Peppers and potatoes have only slowly spread in Europe over the last 200 years.
A lot of time passed before the ingredients were used in national dishes.
Paprika, also called Spanish pepper was a cheap pepper substitute for a long time.
Nevertheless, the vegetable and the spice needed centuries until the current acceptance in the pots.
Alleged even:
The recipe for beef goulash with potatoes appeared 100 years earlier in a Jewish cookbook before it was first mentioned in Hungary.
In very old Hungarian cooking recipes, paprika powder was not used.
In early times, a special savory with a peppery flavor was used for the soup.
The noble paprika powder was once a precious spice and found its way into Hungarian cuisine later than in German-speaking countries.
It was not until the end of the 19th century that János Kotányi, owner of a paprika mill in Szeged, published Hungarian cooking recipes using paprika seasoning.
It is certainly thanks to him that Hungarian cuisine is associated with paprika spice.
Tokány is goulash without paprika and, depending on the type of meat, similar to Irish stew in preparation.
4. Goulash Soup Chef
It is always a matter of concern to me to convey cooking knowledge vividly.
Over the past three decades, I’ve been able to look into different cooking pots as well as browse through many, many cookbooks.
So that we don’t slip into theory, I’ll provide you with some tops tips to make your goulash soup extra fine.
Chef tips for cooking goulash soup yourself:
–> Cook yourself a bone broth from marrow bones in advance, optionally with veal bones.
–> You can do it faster by cooking the marrow bones directly in the goulash later.
–> The marrow bones give the goulash a particularly deep flavor and nothing can replace them.
–> The marrow and meat scraps from the bone will complement your goulash soup.
–> Please sweat the yellow finely diced onions for at least 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
–> Caramelize the onions with sugar, use raw cane sugar for a strong and full flavor.
–> Do not fry the meat, but sauté it in the onions.
–> Always roast the tomato paste vigorously, creating the dark color and typical taste.
–> Never dry roast the paprika powder, it will become bitter. You can also add it later after deglazing.
–> Potato cook the great chefs in an extra pot. Thus, the of goulash can be perfectly matched.
–> Peppers please peel, the peels of the pods are indigestible.
–> Traditional binding with flour: Today, chefs mainly bind the soup with starch stirred cold.
–> Always pestle cumin seeds fresh in a mortar, so they develop the cumin aroma best.
–> Always press or crush garlic with salt so that it does not become bitter.
–> Finely grate the lemon, the white skin of the lemon makes the stew bitter. Use only the fine peels.
Remains some secret tips from the chef of the century Eckart Witzigmann:
In his cookbook “Meine 100 Hausrezepte” (My 100 Home Recipes), Mr. Witzigmann cooks the goulash soup with, among other things, a small amount of vinegar water.
Vinegar water consists of 100 ml of tarragon vinegar and 100 ml of cold water.
The quantity refers to 2.5 kg of beef from the shoulder.
Mr. Witzigmann also uses 850 g of canned tomatoes for good measure.
The stewing of the goulash is done in a closed pot “in the tube” (oven) at 150 degrees Celsius for several hours.
The cook of the century goulash soup is flavored with turtle spice:
Turtle spice:
In a mortar few cumin seeds with a little thyme, a pinch of marjoram,
a pinch of fennel seeds and curry and a teaspoon of coriander seeds and mustard seeds,
crush 3-4 cloves, 49 black peppercorns, 29 white peppercorns and a pinch of oregano.
Please use the spice carefully at the end of the preparation to taste.
5. Classic Goulash Soup
Honestly, there is no such thing as classic, every chef and every region offers specialties in the preparation.
Viennese goulash soup is prepared without peppers, only with potatoes.
A pußta soup is a particularly dark and spicy, strong version of the popular soup.
Szeged goulash soup is prepared with pork and sauerkraut.
It is interesting to look at old cookbooks.
I prefer to look at Mary Hahn’s Illustrious Cookbook, created after 1910.
There I could not discover a goulash soup but a goulash as a plate dish.
Interesting here is the high-quality meat that Mrs. Hahn used for goulash:
Instead of cattle calf meat or other stewing meat, Mary Hahn uses roast beef, tenderloin or intermediate rib for goulash.
These pieces of meat significantly reduce the braising time.
By the way, the correct stewing of soup in the oven has gained acceptance in a few regions.
I make an exception for goulash soup, and cook it on the stove.
So far, I haven’t been able to tell much of a difference when making soup, whether on the stove or in the oven.
6. Cooking Grandma’s Goulash Soup Simple
My grandmother prepared the goulash in the simplest version:
–> Sauté onions until golden brown
–> Add the meat and stir
–> Add tomato paste
–> Roasting
–> Fill up with water and add beef bouillon cubes.
–> Add cumin, marjoram and paprika powder
–> Boil goulash until soft then add the potatoes and cook until soft
–> Final season to taste with salt, pepper and sugar
–> According to the season, small cut peppers from the garden were added in any color.
–> Parsley or lovage finely chopped sprinkled on the soup.
Chef of the century Eckart Witzigmann has ennobled the beef stock cube in his cookbook “my 100 home recipes”.
On page 95, he uses this in the Szeged goulash: “Grained broth as a seasoning is better than making the goulash with meat broth …”
7. Goulash Soup In the Oven
You can, of course, stew your goulash soup in the oven after preparing it on the stove.
As described above, I don’t see much advantage to the oven method for soup.
I have both variants:
- Cooking on the stove, gently simmering
- Braising in the oven
… tried several times and can not notice much difference.
Just decide on a method.
Here follows another graphic on the subject of technically correct braising:
8. Goulash Soup With Potatoes
In most recipes, the potatoes are simply added to the goulash at the end and cooked in the goulash until soft.
This method saves you another pot to cook extra potatoes.
Nevertheless, I recommend you to boil the potatoes extra in salted water.
The advantages at a glance:
–> You can cook the potato cubes exactly to the desired bite, then drain them.
–> The meat is sure to be cooked and soft when you add the cooked potatoes to heat.
–> You can still individually control and adjust the amount of potato addition.
–> Binding the soup with extra starch water allows you to bind accurately and avoids a soggy goulash.
–> You can save some potato cubes for decoration
The question remains, what kind of potatoes you use for goulash.
Floury potatoes are often specified, I also really like firm boiled potato cubes in goulash soup, they retain more bite.
9. Party Goulash Soup
Throughout Germany, it is the number 1 party soup.
However, nowadays a potato goulash is also a good idea, because without meat is simply “in”.
I would clarify this with the guests in advance, someone does not like meat or beef also offers pork or the vegetarian version of the soup.
Both soups are easy to prepare and can be made hours, even a day, before your event.
When your soup is finished cooking, place a stainless steel ladle in the soup.
Then the soup goes into the refrigerator.
The stainless steel ladle conducts heat from the soup, even if a skin forms as it cools.
This is important so that the soup does not tip over and become sour.
Avoid putting a lid on the soup before it is cold. otherwise, the heat cannot get out of the pot well and the goulash may become sour as well.
Reheat the soup 20 minutes before serving.
Stir a lot, especially in the beginning, because the soup tends to burn due to the starch it contains and the potatoes.
10. Boil Down Goulash Soup, Preserve It
In the previous paragraph I have already written quite a bit about the proper cooling of goulash soup.
Prepared and properly cooled goulash has a shelf life of 5 days in the refrigerator.
Do not put the lid on the pot until it has cooled down.
Alternatively, you can decant into suitable cans with lids.
Flat cans with lids or freezer bags that you shape flat when freezing are best.
The goulash is then also quickly defrosted.
Another alternative is canning in jars.
Pour the hot goulash soup into clean, vinegar-washed jars with lids.
You should end with liquid on top, 7 mm distance to the lid is a good guideline.
Then close the jars neatly.
Preheat oven at 120°C and insert a deep baking tray with boiling water.
Place the jars in the water and boil down for a good 1.5 hours.
Allow the jars to cool at room temperature and then refrigerate.
If done well, your boiled down goulash soup should keep for at least 3 months.
11. Frequently asked questions about goulash soup
I have compiled the most important, answered cooking questions for you below:
Should I cook goulash soup with red wine?
Goulash soup you cook please without red wine with beef broth or bone broth.
Can I prepare goulash soup in the oven
After preparation on the stove, you can stew goulash soup in the oven at 150 ° C for several hours professionally correct.
When will the goulash soup be ready?
Just taste the meat after an hour of cooking. Increase the cooking time until the meat is completely tender.
What meat do I use for goulash soup?
You can buy commercial goulash meat from beef, alternatively cattle calf meat or meat from beef shoulder.
12. More Goulash Recipes Ideas
You’ll find more great ideas here on the food blog:
Mushroom Ragout Recipe for Quick Cooking
Boeuf Bourguignon Recipe for Beef Burgundy
Lamb Goulash Recipe
Beef Goulash Recipe
Vegetarian Goulash – Veal Cream Goulash goes Veggie 🙂
Pork Goulash Recipe with Chef Tips
Vegan Goulash with Sweet Potato Recipe
Szegediner Gulasch Recipe with Variants Tips
Veal Stew Recipe
Potato Goulash Recipe Vegetarian
Deer Ragout and Wild Ragout Recipe with Step by Step Instructions, Cooking Video, Chef Tips
Making your own goulash, German recipe with chef tips and cooking video, step-by-step pictures
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